How can I change the mail hotkey from Outlook to GMail on my Logitech K260?

[XtrGamer]

Dear Experts,

I use a Logitech K260 Wireless keyboard which has several useful hotkeys like play/pause, mute, decrease and increase volume, homepage, mail, sleep button etc.

On my PC, the mail hotkey goes to Outlook, but unfortunately I don't use Outlook, I prefer GMail. So how can I make it access GMail instead of Outlook? Is there anyway of changing the default mail service from Outlook to GMail or something similar to that so that each time I want to write an email (which is very frequent) I can use the hotkey.

[DaveLembke]

Its probably hard coded into the keyboard to perform an ascii burst, but I will try to hunt around to see if there is a way to redirect it. Its too bad outlook wasnt out on the www, because if so a hosts file alteration would be a easy redirection. You need your keyboards ascii burst to be www.gmail.com from the current outlook.exe burst.

OR a "Redirection HACK" to make this work is that if you never plan on using outlook a special outlook.exe replacing the outlook.exe which performs a batched instruction such as

iexplore "www.gmail.com"

Create the batch file, compile it as an exe and replace outlook.exe with this compiled batch.

[Allan]

You can change key assignments in the Logitech Mouse & Keyboard Settings if you installed the Logitech driver.

[XtrGamer]

You can change key assignments in the Logitech Mouse & Keyboard Settings if you installed the Logitech driver.

How can I do that?

[Allan]

Open up the driver applet - you'll see how to do it.

[XtrGamer]

Open up the driver applet - you'll see how to do it.

I presume open the driver applet means go to Control Panel then Devices then Keyboards. But my keyboard comes as unknown device. When I select it and click on hardware properites and go to the drivers part, they tell me all the drivers are up to date when i try to update them. Worst of all. the computer thinks that the keyboard is manufactured by Microsoft. When I click for driver details, they tell me there are no driver files in the computer. Please help me guys!

[Salmon Trout]

A quick forum search for Logitech K260 suggests (others have asked this before) that there is no way to remap the keys. This is a very cheap wireless keyboard. The problem is that the email key opens your system default email program which apparently is Outlook. Gmail is a web based mail service that you access through your browser. The best you are going to get is to configure Outlook to use Gmail with POP/SMTP. Or if you have Google as you homepage then there will be a link to your Gmail account at the top.

[Allan]

If the keyboard doesn't come with or support a Logitech driver than Salmon Trout's post is absolutely correct.

[quaxo]

http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Keyboards-and-Keyboard-Mice/Reassigning-K260-Keyboard-and-Mouse-Combo-and-Why-is-the-model/td-p/700062

Logitech's Setpoint software doesn't support that keyboard.

Reply 6, from moderator and Logitech employee (so an official response?):

11-27-2011 10:38 AM

Unfortunately the K260 is not supported by Setpoint, it is not possible to reconfigure the keys.

However, you could try some third-party remapping software and see if you can get it to do what you want that way. Otherwise, I'd have to say there's not much you can do about it.

[XtrGamer]

Guys one last try, will offline GMail help?

[quaxo]

No. That just allows Gmail to still be used when you don't have a connection.

However, as I believe was already mentioned, you can configure Outlook to work with Gmail.

http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=13273

[Salmon Trout]

as I believe was already mentioned, you can configure Outlook to work with Gmail.

Or Mozilla Thunderbird (in some ways better than Outlook)

http://www.guidingtech.com/2219/set-up-gmail-in-thunderbird/

http://lifehacker.com/314574/turn-thunderbird-into-the-ultimate-gmail-imap-client

[Salmon Trout]

I thought I would check out the tip I gave above: I tried installing Mozilla Thunderbird on my laptop (XP), and making it work with Gmail, and I have to say that it was one of the quickest and easiest things I have ever done. It took about 3 minutes. I downloaded Thunderbird and installed it. I checked the box to make it the default email client, supplied my Gmail address and password; told it to remember the password; set check for new mail interval to 1 minute; checked "check for new messages at startup"; Thunderbird did the rest. It downloaded all my folders and messages from Gmail. You can zoom to see this picture better: