It can be very useful to have a standard email response to use for responding to types of emails that you receive often.  Gmail Canned Responses allows you to save a standard message and insert it in an email response whenever you like.

Note that Canned Responses is an option in Gmail Labs and they disclose, “Gmail Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that aren’t quite ready for primetime. They may change, break or disappear at any time.”

I recommend that when you are creating a canned response, you create it in a brand new email that you are composing.  If you create it in an email to which you are replying, the canned response will include the sender’s message too!  (Can you tell I learned this from personal experience?)

Google Voice is one of Google’s many free applications which offers an amazing variety of features.

Basically, Google Voice provides one phone number to which you can forward one or more of your phone numbers.  If you have multiple phone numbers attached to your Google Voice number, others only need one number to contact you.  Either way, having a Google Voice number opens up many great features.  Some of my favorites are

• Transcribed voicemail sent to you as an email and/or text message.
• Call screening — remember how you used to be able to listen in on an answering machine message to decide if you wanted to answer?
• Scheduled do not disturb on your Google Voice number — this makes it convenient for use as a home office number
• Access to your Google Voice voicemail messages via smart phone or other mobile device
• One phone number that sends calls to all your numbers

Check out the Google Voice Intro Video for more info about the features.

More Google Voice videos are available on YouTube.

Have fun exploring the many features of Google Voice!