Gmail's 'Quote Selected Text' goes back to Labs

Publish date: 2022-09-25

The official statement from the search giant is found in its official Gmail page in Google+, which goes:

In December, we graduated Quote Selected Text from Gmail Labs. We’ve been listening to user feedback since the graduation and have decided to move the feature back into Gmail Labs. Users sometimes unintentionally quoted text they had inadvertently selected, which caused some confusion. For those of you who like the feature, you can still enable it in Gmail Labs.

By default, Gmail copies everything in your correspondent’s email, along with all previous conversations, when you hit the Reply button and places it at the bottom of your draft. With Quote Selected Text, however, only the highlighted text is quoted in your reply. It’s a useful feature when, for instance, you only want to reply to a specific thought found in very long email.

If you’re like me who misses the feature, you can still re-enable it through Gmail settings:

  • In Gmail, click the cogwheel icon in the upper right, and then choose Settings.
  • From the ‘Labs’ tab, find the Quote Selected Text in the list of experimental features and click its Enable radio button.
  • Click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page.
  • The feature is enabled again after the page refreshes.

    • While you were in the Labs tab, you may have also found other interesting features that Google deems not yet ready for public release. You may test them yourselves, including the useful ‘Custom keyboard shortcuts’ and ‘Background Send.’ Just take note that they may occasionally break or disappear without prior notice.

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