Google's Gmail Labs Adds Ability To Turn E-Mails Into Docs

Google continues to increase the functionality of its Gmail program. The latest enhancement allows Gmail users to take e-mails and automatically turn them into Google Docs.Google has been rolling out new features for Gmail at a furious pace lately, with something new popping up almost once per week. This week's gem? Instant e-mail-to-document conversion.

Software engineer Jeremie Lenfant-Engelmann explains, "More than once, I've had a conversation over e-mail and later realized that the information contained in the messages would make a great starting point for a document. So I built an experimental feature for Gmail Labs that does just that: with one simple click, 'Create a document' converts an e-mail into a Google Docs document. No more copying and pasting the text from your e-mail -- just open the message you wish to convert, click the 'Create a document' link on the right side of the page, and voila, you have a brand new document which you can then modify and share!"

I enabled the feature this morning and tested it out. It works perfectly. The document is created in a manner similar to when you choose to save an e-mail attachment as a document. It takes perhaps three seconds, depending on the size of the e-mail and what it contains. This works with simple text e-mails as well as HTML e-mails.

Thanks, Google!