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Master Gmail

 
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mistux
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Joined: 25 Jun 2004
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Location: South Bend, Indiana USA

PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 10:37 am    Post subject: Master Gmail Reply with quote

So you've jumped on the Gmail bandwagon? Good for you! Abandoning POP mail for Google's mail service and app gains you many interesting perks, such as never having to download your mail again, using a powerful mail search that doesn't seem like an afterthought, and having a nearly infinite amount of online storage space.

That said, after the initial excitement of webmail wears off, you may start missing a few old-school features of Microsoft Outlook, such as personal folders and the ability to organize your mail any way you want. We say "old-school" because there really are better ways to handle your mail—they just require a little change in perspective.


Use labels, not folders

First off, creating a personal folder in Outlook for every project or topic under the sun is more like a chain around your neck than a legitimate productivity enhancer. Instead, Gmail provides a way to label your messages so they are automatically organized into groups, without using folders.

When a message arrives, just click the More Options drop-down and click New Label. Name the label and you're done. Now, that entire message thread will be categorized for you with the new label, which you can access along the left side of the screen. When you don't need that label anymore (if for example, the project has ended), you can remove it. Or just edit it and leave it active. Click the Edit Labels link on the left and put a "z" or a number in front of the label. You can use any letter or number scheme to organize unused labels, although you can't create "sublabels" that mimic Outlook's handy subfolder hierarchy.

Put a filter on it

You can label messages automatically, however. And you can use filters for all kinds of handy tasks, including auto-forwarding messages and deleting them without reading them. To create a filter, click the Create a Filter link—it's located near the search box. Enter the data you want, such as the message sender or text, in the fields. For example, you can filter all messages related to neurology by entering neurology in the "has the words" filter. Click Next. To set up a label filter, click the checkbox next to Apply the label and select one of your labels from the menu. The prospect of automatically organizing all messages from your boss or that relate to a project you're working on seems almost too good to be true, but the system works quite well.

Gmail helpfully suggests applying the filter to existing messages; check that option if you want. Otherwise, just click Create Filter to use the new filter. You can also auto-archive messages, mark them as read, star them, and forward the message automatically using the new filter rules. Delete all messages from your ex-girlfriend without even reading them? Yes, you can do that, too.

Get the syntax

Gmail emphasizes power over a stellar user interface. (In fact, Sundar Pichai, the director of Google Labs, says the company actually debates how every small interface element, especially icons, may slow down the app.) Tapping into that power is not always intuitive. And there are some things you still can't do, such as grouping all e-mails from the same person regardless of thread. However, what Gmail does provide is an easy, effective way to search for e-mails based on labels, who sent the message, the subject, and other factors.

In fact, for those with a vast e-mail archive, searching is really the way to go—we all have too many messages to keep them organized. Think of it this way: In Outlook, you can click on the Deleted folder and group by sender to see all messages from Uncle Hal. In Gmail, you can just type his e-mail address in the search field, and all the messages he sent you will appear in the results box. With all due respect to Uncle Hal, he is easier to find by searching than by categorizing.

Searching goes far beyond just typing an e-mail or a portion of a message, although one of the most powerful searches you can perform is when you remember a particular phrase, such as "get grandma for christmas." The key is learning the Gmail "operators" that you can type in the search box. Use "subject:" to search only e-mail headers. Use "from:bob" to find messages that your pal Bob sent you, and not the ones you sent to him. Instead of clicking on a label, you can type "label:" and the name to find messages with that label.

Advanced syntax

If you grok the basic syntax like "from:" or "label:" you are ready for more advanced search modifiers. For example, you can search for messages that were sent between a period of time. Just type "after:x before: x," where you replace the x with a date, in the format year/month/day or month/day/year.

Another great trick is to use parentheses to control your mail search. Let's say you'd been working on a project related to golf. You were making diagrams of several golf courses, including Pebble Beach and Stonebridge. If you wanted to find only the messages related to those two courses, you could use the syntax "golf (pebble beach and stonebridge)." This search weeds out a lot of superfluous messages. For those who receive hundreds or thousands of messages per month, it means a lot less hunting around for a few particular messages and homing in on just a few.

From PC Magazine
ARTICLE DATE: 12.24.07

By John Brandon
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