What are some lesser known Gmail tips and hacks ?

Be it for your business purpose or personal, you’ll find these tricks extremely helpful. Not only you can work online on Gmail but also offline. Interesting!? There are more such tips and tricks below. Let’s check them out.

1. MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR LABELS

Keep your emails organized in different folders called as labels. Whether it is your marketing handle or updates for your meeting or emails from your family members, keep it all segregated. Show the labels you need and hide rest of them.

How to create a new label? – Settings > Labels > Create New Label

In case you have created multiple labels, change the color of your labels to easily recognize them. To do this, place the cursor over a label and you’ll find a drop-down arrow, click on it and set a color.

2. RECEIVE EMAILS FROM OTHER ACCOUNTS

Yes, you can receive emails from your Yahoo, Hotmail or any other email account in your Gmail inbox. It is a must-have feature. Why? Won’t this cut short your time? After enabling it you need not check other accounts one by one. You can go through your emails in one go itself.

How to do this? Settings > Accounts and Import > Add a mail account > Enter your email id > Link account to Gmailify and you are done.

3. CHECK EMAILS, REALLY QUICK!

With the preview pane feature, you can access the list of your inbox and view the email you want (either horizontally or vertically), on the same window. You can see the photo below for the vertical-pane view. Vertical view is more convenient than the horizontal one, as you can see a long list of your inbox via this mode.

How you enable it? Settings > Labs > Preview Pane > Enable it and save the changes. Then, toggle split pane mode will appear just next to the settings icon in your inbox. Select the mode you want and check your emails.

4. UNSEND AN ACCIDENTALLY SENT EMAIL

Whenever you are in a hurry, did you ever press enter accidentally, before finishing your email? Had you known this before, you could have unsent the email. You have the lease for up to 30 seconds to undo the sent email. In this time frame, you need not worry as that message will not pop up any notification at the receiver’s end (if you are successfully able to send the message).

How to do this? – Settings > General > Undo Send > Enable undo send and set the time. Also, do not forget to save it.

5. ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH BOOMERANG?

No, not the Instagram Boomerang. It is an add-on extension called the Gmail Boomerang.

Do you forget to send reminder emails or wish to schedule messages? Add this extension and you will be relaxed! This allows you both- scheduling your messages and even sending reminders, according to the time and date you have saved.

How to schedule your messages? Get Boomerang for Gmail from Chrome Web store. After logging in you can see Send Later option just below the normal send option while you reply to an email.

6. SEND SENSITIVE EMAILS IN THE MOST SECURE WAY.

Use Gmail like never before! Sit unperturbed and send emails that you don’t want others to see. These are the encrypted emails where you have to create a password and the receiver has to enter the same password in order to access the email.

How to do this? Get the Secure Gmail Extension from Chrome Web Store and feel free to send sensitive emails. Once you have the extension, you’ll see a lock icon just next to your compose button. Click on it and compose the email. Create the encryption password and send it.

7. SEND EMAILS THAT CAN BE VIEWED ONLY ONCE

Apart from the encrypted emails, you can also send emails that can be viewed only once. You can do this by activating the SnapMail extension. The receiver can view the email for only 60 seconds after which, the email will be destroyed automatically.

How to send this email? Add the Snapmail extension to your Chrome and send the message to it.

8. STICK TO IMPORTANCE MARKERS, DIFFERENT STARS AND PUNCTUATION MARKS FOR BETTER GMAIL EXPERIENCE

Do you get confused as to why did you start an email? Well, you will not get confused from now on. Activate different stars for different reasons. For instance, use the red star for the most urgent work or green tick for the work that is done. Other than stars, you can activate Importance Markers for your emails. These are can be automated. They’ll help you figure out the important emails from rest of the emails.

How to do this?–

• To set Importance Markers: Settings > Inbox > Importance Markers > Show markers and save!
• For stars and exclamation marks: Settings > Stars > Hold and drag the exclamation or stars you are need of and save. (Go to your inbox and click on star more the one time to change the colour.)

9. SET UP YOUR OWN CANNED RESPONSES

While promoting or marketing, there are times when you have to send the same email again. Besides that, you might have some set message that you have to send to various people at different times. So for this, you type the whole thing over and over again or copy them from your previous emails. I have a better idea for you. You can save your message once and access it anytime while replying to someone. This can be done by setting up a canned response.

How to set your own canned response? Settings > Labs > Canned Responses > Enable > Save.

Now, compose an email. On the extreme right, you’ll see an arrow just next to the bin. Click on it and add your framed message, add more than one, if you need. Use it as and when required. Isn’t it a great time saver hack?

10. SEARCH LIKE A PRO!

Undoubtedly, you search for a particular email in your inbox when needed. With these easy hacks, you can search any email in the most efficient way. Nonetheless, these tricks are great time-savers. The ones that are most commonly used are mentioned below.

• When you have to search for an email from a particular person, just type their name in the search bar and you’ll find all their emails on your screen.
• In case, you want to find out a some attached document from an email, the type has: attachment in your search bar. With this, you’ll get all the emails that have some attached media. It will help you to find the required email quite easily.
• Apart from these search tricks, you can make your search more specific as well.

How to create specific searches? Click the drop-down arrow in your search bar and add the details for a more specific search.

Key take away-If your inbox is slow due to heavy emails. Type large: xMB (x is any number, example, large: 8MB) in your search bar. Clear those emails or save them somewhere else if you require them. In future use Google Drive to send heavy attachments. It will keep your inbox light!