Scheduling E-Mails in GMail

In education today, technology is seen as being more essential than ever.  This is a good thing.  This means that your business office is more likely to fund essential technology projects than they were ten years ago.  But (yes, there is always a but!) money is still tight for most schools, and squeezing every technology dollar for all it is worth is still as important as ever!  That is one reason that I have spent time researching and comparing different solutions for schools that help them do just that.  And one of the things that I recommend to schools more often than not is to make the big move to Google Apps for Education -- it is free, after all, and offers many great features.  This post is not about the many wonders of Google Apps for Education, I can do that at some other time, but it is about one of the things that is missing out of their venerable G-Mail application that people often complain about:  the inability to schedule messages!  One thing I hear about over and over is how much they loved being able to write an e-mail while they are at work at schedule it to go out in the evening when they are using Outlook with Microsoft Exchange.  It is a nice feature.

So, this is a glaring omission -- but you can work around it and schedule your e-mails!  I want to be up front and let you know that I did not develop this method, and the links contained in these instructions go back to the originator of this because the spreadsheets he uses are perfect but my instructions differ slightly.

Creating A Scheduled E-Mail in Google Mail

1. Write the draft message(s) that you wish to schedule and save them in GMail.
2. Make a copy of the GMail Scheduler Spreadsheet (Courtesy of ctrlq.org) - this will also open the spreadsheet.
3. Change the default TimeZone in the spreadsheet to yours by clicking File --> Spreadsheet Settings
4. Inside the Sheet choose the authorized sender: under the GMail Scheduler Menu select Authorize and grant the necessary permissions.  Note that the script runs on your Google Drive and none of your data is every accessible to the outside!
5. Choose GMail Scheduler --> Fetch Messages to import those draft messages you created in step 1.
6. Select the date/time to send the message in Column D in the mm/dd/yyyyy hh:mm:ss format.
7. Go to GMail Scheduler --> Schedule Messages to run the scheduler and schedule your messages.  It will then send your messages at the time you specified.

Like videos better?  The creator of this method has one on YouTube -- here it is!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

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