Gmail Tips & Tricks to Turn You into a Savvy User
There’s more to Gmail than just flagging messages, tagging them, and sending them to junk. As a Google product, the mail service is laden with features that can make mail checking a more efficient process – and this is whether you use Gmail for business purposes or for personal mail. Here are the top Gmal tips and tricks to turn you from a novice user to a savvy one:
Look into what Gmail Labs can do for you
The Gmail interface may be clean and simple but exploring further delves you into a world where more is possible. As its name suggests, Labs is a test bed: a place where the people behind Gmail can test out some features before they become a permanent fixture. You might find this futile since not all of them will be implemented, but it’s a good place to check the many interesting things that Google might be adding to their mail service.
Labs can be accessed by clicking on the gear icon on the top right of the interface then choosing Settings. You’ll find Labs among other features listed on the top portion.
One of the best things out of Labs is Canned Responses. This is really helpful if you spend a lot of time answering the same questions repeatedly. Turning this feature on means you can re-use a sent email as a Canned Response – basically, it functions like a template.
Access your other email accounts from Gmail
These days, having more than one email account seems normal but keeping multiple ones can be time consuming. Think of the time needed to log into each one individually to check for messages, reply to them, and send them to the trash. Although there are other email clients that offer this feature, if you primarily use Gmail then it would be convenient to access your other mail accounts from just one service.
Mute really active conversations
Threads are the beauty and bane of email conversations – just like it is on social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. If you want to keep up productivity or your sanity, muting extremely active conversations (like weekend getaway plans with your mates) that are not essential to what you’re doing can surely help. Muting is not equal to never seeing those messages again – you’re just temporarily blocking them from disturbing you for a period of time. If you want to see the messages you’ve missed, you can just un-mute the conversation.
Unleash your inner detective
You don’t like receiving unsolicited email but sadly, you do get them. The truth is that someone may have sold your address but how to know which one? There is an easy way to check if you use [email protected] as your handle. Gmail ignores periods (.) so you can add that to your email when you give it out. Through that, you can determine just who sold your address. There is a limitation though: it only works with addresses that end in @gmail.com.
These tips are just a little taste of what Gmail can do for you. There are even Chrome extensions like Handle that also make life easier when using the mail service. Gmail is one of the best mail clients available today and there’s a good reason for that.