5 Gmail Hacks & Tips You May Not Know Of

Auto Canned Response

Since Gmail Labs introduced Canned Response, I’ve heard a lot of praises for the ability to cut down copying/pasting time. I personally have no need for that because my assistants do all the email checking/responding/customer service for me AND I prefer using Direct Access, a macro like program where you can pre-program common texts, emails, URLs, just about anything that is entered on a regular basis. Still, I imagine Canned Response has been a life saver for many.

Did you know that you can send a automatic Canned Responses? This is particularly useful when you get people to contact you about something specific.

1. First you create a canned response. When replying to an email that you want to ‘can’, click Canned responses >> New Canned Response… This assumes you’ve already turned on Gmail Labs Canned response feature.
2. Then, you create a filter to automatically sort / detect the emails you want to send the response to and select the Canned response you want to send. Gmail will automatically reply to the sender your canned response.

Use it sparingly though and be very sure of the filters because it could get annoying. I’ve always hated those vacation responder things

Match Multiple Emails in One Filter

Is your filter list overflowing? If you apply the same filter to several different incoming addresses, then you only need to enter OR in the From field of your filter. For example, I want to filter me@mysite.com and you@yoursite.com. When creating filters, just enter me@mysite.com OR you@yoursite.com. You can edit your old filters and clean up the redundant ones this way too.

Save Your Sent Mails

If you like to keep a copy of your emails in the conversation but don’t like seeing all your emails in the sent folder, you may think that’s a waste of space. Technically, Gmail only ever keeps one copy of your emails. The Sent folder is not a folder at all but a pre-defined label that finds all the emails you have sent out. If you delete messages in the Sent folder, you’ll lose your replies in the conversation thread too.

Stop Filtered Messages From Going To Spam

A while back, I added an email address of someone whom I really wanted to hear from to my Filter list and left it at that, trusting Gmail to know that if the email is filtered then I want it. But that’s not the case, they still ended up in the spam box. You can prevent this by editing your filter and checking the box “Never send it to spam”.

Sort

Gmail really changed things around for people. Most of us are familiar with the sorting ability of many email readers. I actually kinda miss that too. But there is no sort feature in Gmail, however the search feature is awesome. Here’s one way to ’sort’ email using search and Quick Links. So make sure you click on Gmail Labs, find the Quick Links feature and enable that first.

By latest – Click on Show Search Options – a tiny link next to the search box on the top of the screen, in the ‘Date Within’ fields, select 1 year or less if you wish, enter ‘today’ in the box next to it. Click Search. In that search view, Now save your search by clicking Add Quick Link, enter a name e.g. Sort by latest.

By recipient – In your search box, enter the email address of the recipient you want to ’sort’ with – in other words the email addresses that you use. Do the search then click Add Quick Link again.

With this method, you can use a bunch of advanced search options and save these searches to quickly navigate your archives and inbox easily.