Gmail? More like NO mail!
October 31, 2010 4:30 PM

Gmail acting funny in Firefox: I have 2 gmail tabs open. One is for my personal account, the other is through my employer (the college uses google to manage their webmail service). If I try to "Compose Mail" or "Reply" or anything that would open up a new email, on either account, the top of the page goes to "Loading" but nothing ever happens. In addition, the Gmail Chat tab is missing. Only not working on my home computer; both were working fine on my office computer when I went in to check 30 min ago.

BTW: Tried this thread, but no help. The "Loading" freeze also happens when I try to click "settings." The only thing that I can do is open up emails and go to the various email boxes (inbox, sent, etc).
posted by Saxon Kane to Computers & Internet (11 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
I've always been under the impression that you can only be logged into one gmail/google account at a time (in the same browser)....

You do know, however, that you can use one gmail login to send mail from a number of accounts (and receive mail from other accounts, including gmail) if you use the settings to allow that.
posted by HuronBob at 4:42 PM on October 31, 2010


I am under the same impression- one session per browser. Either link one account to the other, or use two actual different browsers (Firefox and Chrome, or Safari or IE or whatever).
posted by drjimmy11 at 4:47 PM on October 31, 2010


Google just started offering organizations that are using google apps (so if gmail is you email client from your company or school that means you), the ability to get 'all' the benefits of a standard google account. The downside however is for those of us that also have a personal google account it really screws things up. The only workable option (if you want offline email to work which for me is a must have) is to have your personal account open in different browser. IMHO Google made a dogs ass out of the change, I'm still really pissed about it.

If your organization made the change you should have gotten an email telling you about it.
posted by Long Way To Go at 5:03 PM on October 31, 2010


It's not necessarily true that you can only be logged into one session per browser. I have multiple gmail accounts and am able to have more than one logged in at the same time (in multiple tabs in the same browser) using the Mozilla add-on WebMail Notifier. However, it does appear to be true that you cannot compose emails from more than one account at the same time.
posted by fuse theorem at 5:11 PM on October 31, 2010


The above responses have it right. Whichever account you log into last will have it's cookies and session set, overwriting the other one. Thus, you won't be able to use both at the same time.

The simple solution: use two different browsers. Load one account up in Chrome and the other in Firefox.
posted by chrisamiller at 5:23 PM on October 31, 2010


Did you just update to Firefox 3.6.12? It's causing issues in Gmail; try the fix here.
posted by donnagirl at 5:34 PM on October 31, 2010


Not, strictly speaking, the answer to your question, but I long ago solved my own problems with this using MultiFox which allows you to open a new window which has its own cookies/sessions etc.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 6:01 PM on October 31, 2010


Was having the same problem on 1 of 2 Gmail Apps domains that I admin.

donnagirl's solution has fixed it for me!

I think the "cookies" issue is a red herring because I could be in both accounts of the two different Gmail Apps Domains at the same time and one one of them would have the issue. But then it would have the same across 3 computers regardless of the Internet connect, but they were all on Firefox.

So for those who don't want to read the link, check your Firefox's about:config and make sure dom.storage.enabled is TRUE.
posted by tiamat at 6:11 PM on October 31, 2010


donnagirl (with an assist from tiamat) FTW. I've always been able to have my personal Gmail account open as well as my institution's google app managed webmail account open at the same time -- it was only today after over a year of no problems that I started getting the hanging "Loading" message.

Thanks!
posted by Saxon Kane at 6:43 PM on October 31, 2010


Just to be clear for others, you can be signed into multiple Google accounts at once. If you enable multilogin you will have a drop-down in the top right you can use to switch accounts in supported products. You can even have 1 tab open with 1 account and another tab with a different account. A few products will get confused, they just use whichever account you logged into first.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-multiple-sign-in-now-available.html

It's relatively new so many of you may have missed it.
posted by wildcrdj at 7:01 PM on October 31, 2010


Oh, here's the official Google page on it with more info.
posted by wildcrdj at 7:03 PM on October 31, 2010


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