Gmail Preview Pane

Sometimes you can tell what an email message is about from the subject line, but often you have to open the message to be sure. Did you ever wish you could read email messages without opening them?

With the Gmail Preview Pane from you can quickly preview your email messages without opening them. This tool opens a pane next to your inbox that displays the text of incoming messages.

At a glance, you can tell how you should handle each new Gmail message. In many cases, you may not even have to open the message to process it.

Best of all, the Preview Pane in Gmail is not difficult to use. In this tutorial, we'll explain what the Gmail Preview Pane is, then show you how to set it up and start using it.

What is the Gmail Preview Pane? (And Why You Should Use It)

An email preview pane lets you view some of the contents of an email before you open it. When the preview pane in Gmail is enabled in Gmail, it can appear to the right of inbox messages or beneath your messages.

As you probably already realize, an email message's subject line isn't always helpful. While it's a good idea to use descriptive subject lines for email messages, not everyone who sends you a message realizes this or puts it into practice.

With Gmail, you can choose to use a preview pane. Other email packages such as MS Outlook also make use of a preview pane (sometimes called a reading pane). If you are used to using an email tool with a preview pane, enabling the Gmail preview pane option may help you become more comfortable with using Gmail.

The main benefit of using a preview pane is that saves time. You don't have to click on each message to see the contents inside. If you process lots of email messages each day, the extra time it takes to click on and open each message adds up. Eliminating those extra clicks can make a difference if you process a lot of email messages each day.

How to use the Gmail Preview Pane

The Gmail inbox, displays, but you'll notice a new icon next to the Settings icon. It's the Toggle split pane mode icon:

Configuring the Gmail Preview Pane

Click the down arrow next to the Toggle split pane mode icon to display a drop-down menu:

Use the drop-down menu by the Toggle split pane mode icon to select how your preview pane appears. You have three choices:

1. No Split - No preview pane appears.
2. Vertical Spit - A preview pane for the selected message appears to the right of your inbox list.
3. Horizontal Split - A preview pane for the selected message appears below your inbox list.

The example below shows an inbox configured with a horizontal split:

Notice that the text of the select message appears below the inbox list.

Step 3. Using the Gmail Preview Pane

Even after you've configured your Preview Pane in Gmail, you won't see any message text until you select a message. Without any messages selected, your preview pane looks something like this:

To use preview pane feature, click on a message to select it. Once you've selected a message, the message text for the selected message displays in the Gmail preview pane:

Here's how to check Gmail messages quickly with the Preview Pane turned on: Once you've selected your first message, use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to quickly select the next message in your inbox and preview the contents. There's no need to click on each message in your inbox individually.