I'm always surprised by how few people really learn to master GMail especially as more businesses use it and grumble because it's not Outlook. I find I'm more productive in Gmail than most of the well-known desktop email, but there are a few things to learn.
In other email programmes, they're folders, but GMail uses labels. The same message can have multiple labels so you can boost your chances of finding things later. When you 'Move to…' you're really labelling and archiving.
When you've got the kind of job where you will have to refer back to emails, taking the time to set up a few sane labels can make a huge difference when you're searching later on.
Gmail already does a pretty good job of showing you the result you want with a plain search. But when you're looking for that one email among hundreds, narrowing it down can save your bacon.
Notice drop-down arrow at the left of the search bar. Bam! You've got search options. Refine by sender, recipients, subject, body, labels, send date, and more.
Super pro? You don't need the drop down, try the keywords from:, in:, subject:"…" and notice they give you tab completion options for super quick entry.
Take those refined searches and turn them into filters! Open the advanced search drop down and notice the Create filter with this search » link at bottom-right.
Now you can auto-label, archive, and mark as read. Skipping the menial morning task of labelling and archiving things you won't read.
Want to read it, then file it? Auto-adding the label with a filter means you can just archive once you're done reading, without giving a second thought to the label.
Bonus tip: Share your filters! Under Settings > Filters you can scroll to the bottom of the page and Export the selected rules so you can share your wizardry with your team or new hires.
Keeping your inbox near-zero means you consider the remaining items actionable. How do you make sure you follow-up on the important stuff? Banish the rest to the archive. If you aren't going to act on it, archive it. If it's been churning along the bottom for a week, are you really going to act on it? Learn more about Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero philosophy
"But my inbox has 42,000 emails" I hear you cry. Use your advanced searches to label and archive as intelligently as you can, then pick a point of no return and send the rest to archive. Given how fast most of our business runs, you can probably send everything older than a month or this quarter to archive. Remember, you can always use your search to pull it out of archive.
Love 'em or hate 'em, keyboard shortcuts can save you a lot of time with your email triage.
First, you need to enable them: Settings > General; find the Keyboard shortcuts option.
Now what? Press the ? button and an overlay appears with all the options.
Before you get overwhelmed, here are the ones I use on a daily basis. First, notice the little blue bar to the left of the last selected email.
Now press j (down) and k (up) to move the cursor. You can read enter or reply r
Press x to select messages in your inbox so you can make bulk changes:
eto archive(remove from inbox)vto move the messages to a label (label and archive)shift + ito mark as readshift + uto mark asunread- Select everything with
* then a - Select all reads conversations with
* then r
Want to send a new email? Press c to compose
Search for an email? / puts your cursor in the search bar. Press esc to move the focus back to the list.
Go to your Inbox? g then i
Go to Sent? g then s
Go to Drafts g then d
- You can Mute long email threads
- You can use firstname.lastname+filter@hootsuite.com to create special rules (GMail essentially treats it the same as firstname.lastname@hootsuite.com)
- Check out GMail Labs for things like:
- Canned Responses
- Multi-pane view
- Undo Send
A little investment in time to learn the 'GMail way' can significantly reduce the mundane email shuffling and let you focus on real work.