Discover the Best Tricks to Be a Gmail Pro User

As of 2017, Gmail has 1.2 billion users worldwide. Considering this statistic, there are great odds that you are using the Google's email service for all your business and personal communications. Gmail comes with many features to enhance your productivity and make work easier for you. If you want to be more productive and save your time, then there is a Gmail trick for every work scenario. Here is the list of best tricks, hacks, and features of Gmail.

1. Create Gmail Labels to Organize Emails Better.

a) Click on ‘Gear’ icon at the top right corner and;b) Click on ‘Settings’ from the drop-down. c) On Gmail settings page, click on ‘Labels’, scroll down and click on ‘Create New Label’. d) Name the label. This way, you can redirect each client, colleague, or employee email to a special label.

2. Make Certain Emails Skip the Gmail Inbox.

This can save you a lot of time filtering out less important emails from the inbox. a) Open the email in question and click on ‘More’ drop-down menu and click ‘Filter messages like these’. b) On the menu which appears, you can add additional filters, or just click on ‘create filter with this search’. c) Now check the first option ‘Skip the Inbox’ and choose a label from ‘Apply the Label’ option. You can also apply the same filter to previous emails from the same sender by checking ‘Also apply filter to matching conversations‘ at the bottom. d) Now click on ‘Create Filter’ and you are all set.

3. Discover Gmail Labs

Gmail Labs is a place for experimental Gmail features where you can find some cool features to integrate with your email account. Many experimental features can come in handy like ‘Unread message icon’ which displays how many unread messages you have just by glancing at the Gmail tab.

4. Search Efficiently with the Detailed Search Feature.

Fetch old emails easily if you need their reference in the new emails. a) There is a small arrow at the right corner of the search bar. b) Click on it and you can find any old email even if you forgot the email address and subject.

5. Gmail Shortcuts

Take your email game to the next level by using various useful shortcuts. While in your Inbox, press ‘Shift’ and ‘/’ to see a huge list of shortcuts. It may need getting used to, but can be a very powerful tool in your arsenal.

6. Import Your Email and Contacts to Gmail from other Email Services.

a) Click on ‘Gear’ icon and click ‘Settings’. b) In ‘Accounts and Import’ menu, click on ‘Import mail and contacts’. c) A new window will open up. Enter any Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, Webmail, or POP3 account info and follow the simple steps to import emails into your new email account.

If you want to know how to import your emails and contacts easily, follow this step by step guide.

7. Transform Your Email Address with a Dot or Period.

Gmail doesn’t care if you add a dot in your email address, for example, your.name.example@gmail.com is the same as yournameexample@gmail.com. This trick can be useful if you have a long email address and want people to remember it easily by breaking down every word with a period.

8. Altering Gmail Addresses by Adding a ‘+’ Sign in It.

For example youremail+client1@gmail.com or youremail+Banks@gmail.com. You can create unlimited addresses with this trick because Gmail ignores the + sign and everything after it. You can create these special addresses for anyone and filter them by a) clicking on ‘Gear’ icon, b) clicking on ‘Settings’, c) choosing ‘Create a new filter’ from ‘Filters and Blocked Addresses’ menu. d) In the new filter menu, add the specific email with the + sign in the ‘To’ field and assign it to a label for better management. You can use these specialized email addresses for different clients with different names after the + sign and filter the emails accordingly.

9. Create Contact Groups

Sometimes you need to send emails to a specific group of people for weeks or months. You can create contact groups to make this task easier and save a lot of time. a) While adding all the related accounts in the ‘To’ field during composing an email, then click on ‘To’, from the new menu, click on ‘Save as Group’ at the bottom. b) Name the group whatever you want and click on ‘Save’ right below it. Next time, just type the group name in the ‘To’ field and the email service will take care of the rest.

10. Canned Responses

If you have to reply with the same message to everyone, then there is a Canned Responses feature in Gmail Labs.a) Go to Labs and enable Canned Responses feature. b) Now create a new filter and specify possible criteria which need a canned response, check ‘Send Canned Response’ option and choose your pre defined response. This feature can save you a lot of time when you are on a vacation or leave and can’t be of any help to the senders.