One of Michael John Neill’s recent Genealogy Tip of the Day was about the need to document when one opened a Google g-mail Account. Since I have been using g-mail for a long time and have no recollection of when I started using it, I decided to try and find out that information.
In hopes of finding that information in my profile, I checked there first. Unfortunately, I did not quickly find anything in my profile concerning when I started using Google for email.
I then did a search of my email for the word ‘welcome’. After scrolling thru several screens of results, I fortunately found my welcome message.
The date of the email is present on the results screen, but the message itself does not contain the date.
My message offers a glimpse into Google history since it mentions services like Picassa that no longer exist.
Since I wanted the date and the message together so I could save a PDF copy, I wanted to see the original message. In order to view the original, I pulled down the ‘carrot’ near the reply icon and selected show original.
With the original message on the screen, I now was able to print a PDF version of the message that included the date. (Note: The original version of an email is the html code for the email. Thus, the formatting is lost.)
