- Image by Chiot’s Run via Flickr
The Problem: Google missed the mark (or rather the company has technical limitations that we don’t know about) on one feature in its mobile Gmail app: You can’t view your Drafts on your mobile device. Yet, if I access Gmail through my mobile’s Internet browser, I can view Drafts. But using the browser to check Gmail on a mobile phone takes more work and time.
I use Drafts as a way to take notes and keep revising or adding on to them. It can be for an article, brainstorming, grocery list, anything goes. While I could email these notes to myself in Gmail and access them on my mobile device, I can’t add on to sent emails unless I reply and that makes a mess.
By the way, I do synchronize “memos” between the Palm Desktop organizer and Gmail. Accessing these memos requires going through Gmail Contacts app, which sometimes hangs when I click “Contacts” in Gmail. That’s because Gmail collects every address and duplicates them. I could turn off this feature, but it has its advantages. Anyway, the Drafts route is more manageable than the Memos route.
Now. I could go find another app for note taking, but haven’t found one that integrates seamlessly with Gmail and Gmail for mobile. Not crazy about the idea of finding and adding another separate app to use everywhere. Maybe you use one. If so, please share the app and your experience. Maybe I’d be willing to try it!
I’ve figured out a way to work with this. It’s not pretty or as efficient as it could be if Gmail for mobile would make Gmail Drafts accessible. But it works.
The Ugly Workaround. Create a Mobile label (aka folder). When I have a draft that I’d like to access on my mobile phone, I copy and paste it into a new email and send it to myself to file it under Mobile. Anytime I need to access the info, I just jump to the Mobile label from my phone. No searching or scanning through hundreds of messages. I keep this label organized with Mobile critical info.
Next time the Draft receives enough updates, I delete the old email in the Mobile folder and replace it with the updated draft.
Like I said, involved — but takes much less work than accessing Gmail through my mobile browser. I bet one of y’all has a better way.
What tips do you have for staying organized between mobile and desktop?
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