How to keep Gmail from trimming my name/signature?
December 14, 2018 8:08 AM Subscribe
Gmail, seemingly at random, 'trims' my farewell remarks and name/signature. It has been getting worse as of late, and I am worried that my work emails are coming off as rude/unprofessional as a result. Does anyone know if there's a fix for this? I've contacted Google but haven't gotten a reply - I'm hoping some of my fellow MeFites are tech-savvy enough to figure this out for me :)
Here is an example of what I'm talking about:
https://imgur.com/WKSeMWo
(I always type my name (blacked out) and greeting in by hand; the big black block (my signature) is the only part of this which I set up through the "gear" menu button)
I somewhat understand why google is trimming my signature, but NOW the algorithm is trimming my name and farewell greetings, seemingly at random!! (Best/Thanks/Have a nice weekend, etc.). This makes my messages come off as somewhat "curt," which is fine when I'm talking with friends but a big no-no when I am talking to my boss...
Not only that, my name and farewells are turning purple since they're below the trim line for some reason! So even if a colleague happens to check the "trimmed" content, it still looks unprofessional.
Does anyone know why this is happening, and if so how can I ameliorate it? I don't want to switch to another email program but I will if I need to - if you feel there isn't a "quick fix" to my problem then please feel free to suggest better email clients!
Thanks in advance!! :)
Here is an example of what I'm talking about:
https://imgur.com/WKSeMWo
(I always type my name (blacked out) and greeting in by hand; the big black block (my signature) is the only part of this which I set up through the "gear" menu button)
I somewhat understand why google is trimming my signature, but NOW the algorithm is trimming my name and farewell greetings, seemingly at random!! (Best/Thanks/Have a nice weekend, etc.). This makes my messages come off as somewhat "curt," which is fine when I'm talking with friends but a big no-no when I am talking to my boss...
Not only that, my name and farewells are turning purple since they're below the trim line for some reason! So even if a colleague happens to check the "trimmed" content, it still looks unprofessional.
Does anyone know why this is happening, and if so how can I ameliorate it? I don't want to switch to another email program but I will if I need to - if you feel there isn't a "quick fix" to my problem then please feel free to suggest better email clients!
Thanks in advance!! :)
Gmail is just trimming it for YOU the sender so that you can focus on the portion of the email that has the important information. Your recipients will still see that portion.
From the Gmail help:
From the Gmail help:
Can't see my signature in my sent messagesposted by jillithd at 8:25 AM on December 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
Signatures are separated from the rest of your message by two dashes.
To see your signature, go to the bottom of a message, then click Show trimmed content [...].
I can't tell if Gmail is actually trimming my sign-offs for real, but it definitely looks to me like it is, and I hate it.
My solution is to type an innocuous word or character on the line below my email signature- sometimes I type the name of the month or sometimes I even just use a period- and then set the colour of that extra bit of text to white, so it's invisible to the recipient.
Gmail reads that extra text as an "exciting new piece of content" and therefore stops cutting out what it sees as "boring repeated text", ie, my sign-off, right above it.
I guess you could get really frisky and actually even tag emails by doing this, so they're even more searchable later. Just don't type anything you wouldn't want the sender to read, as the invisible text will show up for them if they happen to highlight that part of the screen.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 8:29 AM on December 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
My solution is to type an innocuous word or character on the line below my email signature- sometimes I type the name of the month or sometimes I even just use a period- and then set the colour of that extra bit of text to white, so it's invisible to the recipient.
Gmail reads that extra text as an "exciting new piece of content" and therefore stops cutting out what it sees as "boring repeated text", ie, my sign-off, right above it.
I guess you could get really frisky and actually even tag emails by doing this, so they're even more searchable later. Just don't type anything you wouldn't want the sender to read, as the invisible text will show up for them if they happen to highlight that part of the screen.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 8:29 AM on December 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
> Gmail is just trimming it for YOU the sender so that you can focus on the portion of the email that has the important information. Your recipients will still see that portion.
This depends entirely on what they're using to read their mail.
This "feature" was a huge problem for me when I worked at a university that had adopted Gmail. If you go to the help forums, you'll see about a zillion threads on this going back years, with handwaving from official reps.
Back about five years ago when I was tearing my hair out over this, we found that it would completely cut off portions of messages for those reading email on a Blackberry (at the time, still the most common company-issued device in academia) and some older email desktop programs. Not everyone's customers/clients/collaborators/philanthropic donors have the latest devices or software and/or the savvy to intuit that perhaps part of a message is missing for a technical reasons--it just looks rude and weird.
posted by desuetude at 10:20 AM on December 14, 2018
This depends entirely on what they're using to read their mail.
This "feature" was a huge problem for me when I worked at a university that had adopted Gmail. If you go to the help forums, you'll see about a zillion threads on this going back years, with handwaving from official reps.
Back about five years ago when I was tearing my hair out over this, we found that it would completely cut off portions of messages for those reading email on a Blackberry (at the time, still the most common company-issued device in academia) and some older email desktop programs. Not everyone's customers/clients/collaborators/philanthropic donors have the latest devices or software and/or the savvy to intuit that perhaps part of a message is missing for a technical reasons--it just looks rude and weird.
posted by desuetude at 10:20 AM on December 14, 2018
I used to use a Chrome extension called Trimless to restore the trimmed bits, before giving up and complying with Google's wishes.
posted by matsho at 3:59 PM on December 14, 2018
posted by matsho at 3:59 PM on December 14, 2018
Gmail's trimming is infuriating. I've previously asked about related issues, but I didn't get helpful responses. :(
posted by Juliet Banana at 7:23 PM on December 14, 2018
posted by Juliet Banana at 7:23 PM on December 14, 2018
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:17 AM on December 14, 2018 [7 favorites]