This article is a part of the Gmail Tips series.

Google had recently introduced another top requested feature in Google Talk: offline messages. Now, if you're chatting with a friend who goes offline or if you want to send a message to your friend who is offline, just send your message using Google Talk and your friend will be able to receive your messages the next time he or she goes online with Google Talk or a third-party client. Else if they sign in to Gmail, offline messages will be displayed as unread messages in their inbox. Offline messages are also stored along with other instant messages in your chat history in Gmail so that you can search and organise them like any other email.

In order to use this feature you need to have signed up for Gmail using your Google Talk account and enable chat history.