Gmail – Contact list and chat box disappeared

There are a couple different ways to remove the chat feature from Gmail.

1. As previously mentioned, simply click the "Turn off Chat" link in the footer of your Gmail inbox. Depending on the version of Gmail that you are using (as determined by Google), this may or may not hide the chat window completely.

2. You can also click the "older version" link in the footer, which will 100% of the time remove the chat window from the left hand side (in my experience). You can also simply add the querystring parameter &ov=1 to the URL of your inbox (https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1&ov=1), this will have the same effect.

3. If your goal is to simply remove the chat from the left hand side, but not altogether, you can click on the "labs" icon (a little beaker) at the top of your inbox, and enable the Gmail lab entitled "Right-side chat", which will move your chat to the right hand side of the inbox.

4. If none of those options are satisfactory, then I would suggest enabling IMAP and using Microsoft Outlook, or Mozilla Thunderbird for managing your Gmail. See here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77695

You can't do that under gmail's contact quick search but you can sync your contacts and use your preferred application (or even Outlook) to search them. As a bonus, you get synced calendar.

Another option within gmail is enabling keyboard shortcuts, typing g+c then / to search, and g+i to go back to inbox. At least to me that's quick enough.