How to Convert Emails into Docs in Gmail, and Free PDF Online Converters

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 17 Dec 2008

The latest feature to be added to Gmail (and we’ve seen quite a few recently) will allow your to seamlessly turn any of the messages in your inbox into a Google Docs document. Following the recent news that Gmail features a PDF viewer, we will also present some ways to convert said file format into something more manageable, like JPEG (or any other format that you find to your liking).

Software Engineer with Gmail, Jeremie Lenfant-Engelmann explains: “More than once, I've had a conversation over email and later realized that the information contained in the messages would make a great starting point for a document. So I built an experimental feature for Gmail Labs that does just that: with one simple click, "Create a document" converts an email into a Google Docs document. No more copying and pasting the text from your email -- just open the message you wish to convert, click the "Create a document" link on the right side of the page, and voila, you have a brand new document which you can then modify and share!”

If you would like to put this new feature to the test, all you have to do is enable it, and here is a simple three step tutorial:
1. Login to you Gmail account. If you do not have one, why not register? Setting up an account is free-of-charge, it will take a very short time, and once you are done you will get to enjoy some of the cool features that Gmail has to offer.
2. Look to the top right corner and locate the “Settings” tab.
3. Click Settings and then locate the “Labs” button. It should be up and to the left, right next to the “Themes” button. Locate “Create a Document”, set it to “Enable” and then “Save Changes”.

Since you are already pocking around Gmail Labs, you might want to enable the keyboard shortcuts. This will allow you to open a blank Google Doc document when you press “g + w”.

Since we are on the topic of converting things, and since Mozilla recently did away with the need to install Adobe Reader onto your machine by fitting a PDF Viewer to Gmail, let’s see some ways of converting a PDF document into a JPEG image.

If you do not want to locally install and run convert applications, there are several online services that will do this for you, such as Zamzar, YouConvertIt Beta, and Neevia Technology.


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