How to Find Gmail Status Online

You can find the status of your Gmail contacts online.

Gmail allows you to add your address book contacts to Gmail chat, where you can send instant messages and immediately see a friend's status right on your Gmail email interface. This allows you to make a quick decision as to whether an email or a quick message would be the fastest and most appropriate way to relay information. By checking the Gmail chat bar on the left-hand side of the page, you can quickly glean a person's status for the most effective mode of communication.

Instructions

1. Type "www.gmail.com" into the address bar of your Web browser.

2. Enter your login information and sign in.

3. Allow your Gmail account to load. You may notice that your contact list takes longer to load than your email.

4. Look under the "Chat" heading on the left-hand side of the page, where you'll find your contacts' various statuses. A silver dot means a contact is not online. Yellow means they are signed in but are busy or have been inactive for more than 15 minutes. A green dot means contacts are online, active and available.

5. Read a contact's status message by looking directly underneath her name. If she has entered a status message, it will appear in light pink lettering. Set your own status by entering a status message into the "set status here" field under your own chat name.

Tips & Warnings

• You must have a Gmail account in order to access Google chat and see your contacts' online statuses. In order to sign up for a Gmail account, visit gmail.com and click "Create an Account" to enter your information and sign up. Then, add contacts that also have Gmail in order to view online statuses.