Most people who use webmail (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc.) only use it for one thing, that being email and nothing else. At the same time, these same people complain about having a lack of an online organization solution where everything is in one spot. Well, you already have it, it’s in your email.

Here are 4 things most people don’t do with webmail that they should.

1. Use calendar reminders

All major webmail providers come bundled with a built-in calendar, and you should use it. If you have a smartphone, that’s all the better because you can sync your phone’s calendar with your webmail service; this allows for notifications both in your email and optionally as a text message (or app pop-up notification depending on what smartphone you have).

Use that calendar. Stuff it up with everything you need to remember. You check your email every day, and the calendar is free, so go for it.

2. Use quick weather reports

I’m not saying the weather reports in webmail are as extensive as, say, Weather Underground or Weather.com, but your webmail most likely does feature an app that gives you a nice, quick report at any time.

Hotmail in particular does it very well, as a quick forecast is right inside the calendar itself:

3. Use Facebook chat

Facebook chat can be integrated into your webmail. I will admit up front that setup isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but consider that you probably always have your email tab open, right? Why not have your Facebook chat in there in the same tab via your webmail so you don’t have to have 2 tabs open?

Here are some quick tutorials:

How to chat with Facebook in Hotmail

How to chat with Facebook in Yahoo! Mail

How to chat with Facebook in Gmail

4. Use your contact list

It amazes me that people still to this day dig around their inbox or Saved/Archived folder to find a specific person, reply to the email and that’s their way of finding the email address of someone they want to compose a message to. And yes, people really do this. Shameful. Just shameful.

It’s far easier if you just add people you communicate with regularly to your contact list. Every major webmail system makes it easy to do this while you’re reading a message, just click the appropriate part of the sender’s name/email address and it will add it to the list. After that, when composing a new email, all you have to do is type the person’s name that’s in your contact list, the webmail system will find it and add it in. This couldn’t be simpler.

Do you have to enter in a bunch of details for contacts?

No, of course not. Just add the address and whatever name you want to associate with it; this can be as simple as the person’s first name, email address and nothing else. Alternatively you can add in as much info as you want.

Remember, your webmail is an app suite and not just email alone

You’ve been using the same webmail you always have, and have a whole bunch of free stuff in there, so use it. The cost to you is zero.

Here’s another reason to start using more of the built-in apps in your webmail: Getting a tablet soon or are thinking about getting one? You’ll be using your webmail on that, so you might as well set everything up to your liking. All it takes is a few minutes.

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