38 Gmail Tips That Will Help You Conquer Email

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38 Gmail Tips That Will Help You Conquer Email

 38 Gmail Tips That Will Help You Conquer Email
Gmail has come a long way. It's not perfect and occasionally prompts ripples of outrage across its user base. But let's be honest: with Gmail you get plenty for nothing.
As a web app, Gmail is a constant work in progress, but the amount of under-the-hood power is pretty staggering. Sure, there are plenty of browser add-ons and extensions that can enhance Gmail specifically, far beyond its original parameters. However, not every bit of power-user tech in Gmail requires special accessories. Plenty is possible via the main interface—or at your fingertips on the keyboard—without ever making a change to settings or installing something extra.
Mastering even a few of them will help you take full advantage of what Gmail has to offer beyond the basics of sending and receiving messages. Let's get started.

    1Get Paid (or Send Money)

    Google Pay Send (formerly Google Wallet) is built into Gmail. Click the dollar sign icon at the bottom of a message and you have the option to send money. Or select Request Money to tell someone to pay up.
    You and the recipient will need a Google Pay Send account with banking info attached; the Google Pay Send setting for "Send money using Gmail" must also be enabled. The max is $9,999 whether sending or receiving.

    2Shortcut Cheat Sheet

    Gmail is chock full of keyboard shortcuts for just about everything you can do. Check out the Minimalistic Gmail Cheat Sheet from Visual.ly for an info-graphically perfect representation. Or hit Shift+? while in Gmail to get a pop-up list. To switch things up, go to the gear icon () > Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts and turn them on to personalize the keys used. You can't customize if you're using G Suite.

    3Use Multiple Gmail Accounts

    If you're a Gmail super fan and have multiple accounts, there's no need to sign in and out constantly. On the desktop (using Chrome, Firefox, Edge), you can sign into multiple accounts at once. Each can occupy a tab and stay signed in. Click on your account avatar on the top-right and select Add Account. Then, to switch between accounts, click your avatar again, and click the desired account; no password entry required. The process is similar on mobile.

    4Add Other Accounts to Gmail With Gmailify

    Do you love the Gmail interface, but don't want to give up your Yahoo, iCloud, or Outlook email address? Not a problem. Google lets you add third-party email accounts to the Gmail mobile app, which brings Google features like spam filtering and a tabbed inbox to those accounts.
    You need to have at least one Gmail account first for it to work. To set it up on mobile, click your avatar in the Gmail app and select Add another account. Pick the type of account to add, and enter your credentials. You can then access one inbox at a time, or see all your email in one unified inbox on your phone or tablet. Go back to the avatar and select Manage accounts on this device to deactivate or delete an account later.
    On the desktop, select the gear icon () > Settings > Accounts and Import > Check mail from other accounts > Add a mail account. In the pop-up window, type in the email address you want to link, click Next, and select Link account with Gmail (Gmailify).

    5Access Gmail Via Yahoo Mail or Outlook.com

    On the flip side, you can also get your Gmail messages on Yahoo. In the newest version of Yahoo Mail, click the settings icon () > More Settings > Mailboxes > Add Mailbox > Google. You can also add access to Outlook.com or AOL mail here, too.
    Likewise, if you're an enthusiastic Outlook.com user, go to the gear icon () > View all Outlook Settings > Mail > Sync email. You can connect up to 20 email accounts, either Gmail or IMAP.

    6Check Which Apps Have Access to Gmail

    According to reports last year, some app developers may look through your Gmail messages as they build new features. So you may want to occasionally check which apps have access to your accounts. Go to myaccount.google.com > Security. Under "Apps with account access," click manage third-party access to disconnect any apps you don't need.

    7Send From a Different Email Address

    You may have many Gmail-based accounts, or multiple addresses on the same account. You can set all those addresses up in your primary Gmail, and make it look like you're sending from a completely different account, either all the time or on a per-message basis. Go to Settings > Accounts and Import > Send Mail As. Add multiple email addresses. This is great if you send a lot of messages on one account, but want replies to go into another.

    8Move Messages to Different Accounts

    While you can sign into multiple Gmail accounts at once on the desktop and mobile, only the built-in iOS Mail app lets you move a message received on one Gmail account to another Gmail account—or any email that uses iMAP. This is very handy when you get business emails sent to your personal address, or vice versa. To make the move, open any inbox (or the combined inbox of all accounts). If you're in a message, tap the folder icon(); If you're looking at the list, tap Edit, check the box next to the message(s) you want moved, and tap Move. Click Accounts at the top to select the account where you want the message to go, then pick the label/folder within that account to move it to. It's instantaneous. Why no other email app supports this amazing option is beyond me.

      9Don't Just Label Spam, Block Users

      Gmail lets you fully block any individual sender who's bugging you. On desktop or mobile, select the ellipsis menu () next to the Reply button on a message and select Block "[Username]." Any message from that email address will then be sent directly to your spam folder.
    • Undo Send Gmail iOS and Android

      10How to 'Undo Send' in Gmail

      We all know the panic of hitting "send" on an email too soon. With Gmail, you can add a buffer to recall a mistakenly sent message with "Undo Send."
      With the launch of the new Gmail last year, Undo Send is now turned on by default and you can't deactivate it. But you can adjust how long you have to unsend an email. Go to the gear icon () > Settings > General and select how long you want to be able to undo a sent message (5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds). Then scroll down and Save Changes. Whenever you send a message, you'll see an Undo link in a black box floating at the lower-left of the screen on desktop and the lower-right on mobile.
      If you click the link before the time runs out, your message will not go out. You'll get a chance to re-edit it before you try again, or delete it entirely. You can even undo discards, so when you delete a message in progress, you can bring it back and start again.
    • Drag Messages or Labels

      11Drag Messages or Labels

      Gmail doesn't do "folders." Instead, it has "labels." They're functionally the same, albeit discomforting to those used to the whole folder paradigm. It's easy to drag a message from the inbox to a label and thus file it away, archived for future searches. But if that message in the inbox requires further attention, you can drag the label from the left sidebar to the message, as well. It stays in the inbox, but is ready for future archiving.

      12Send+Archive

      Label a message before it's sent by clicking the More Options menu () in the lower-right of the compose window. You can then archive it instantly when sent.
      Go to Settings > General > Send and Archive. Check off "Show 'Send & Archive' button in reply." If a reply you're composing already has a label you'll see a new button called Send+Archive (though it doesn't actually say "archive," it shows Gmail's archive icon, like a file box  with a down arrow on it.) Click that button and the entire thread gets archived to the pre-assigned label/folder.

  • 13Preview in a Pane

    Most desktop email programs like Outlook offer a preview—you click the message in a list and see it in another pane of the window. In Gmail, turn this on under Settings > Advanced > Preview Pane > Enable. Then scroll down and click Save changes. Your browser window will refresh, and when it loads, you'll see a four-line () drop-down menu on the top-right. Click the drop-down menu to select how you want to preview your messages: below your email (horizontal split) or to the right (vertical split). When there's no message selected, the pane provides a preview of how much space your messages are using out of your allotted space.

  • 14Dots Are an Illusion

    The best known secret of all time about Gmail is that it ignores periods in your email address. So yourname@gmail.com is the same as your.name@gmail.com or even y.o.u.r.n.a.m.e.@gmail.com. They all go to the same person. This feature might seem useless, but you can still see the pattern, so it's a great trick for signing up for newsletters or sharing your email address—you can tell who's sold your name to spammers, for instance.

  • 15Add a Plus to Your Address

    Another time-honored Gmail address trick: Gmail ignores anything after a plus sign (). So yourname+pcmag@gmail.com goes to the same place as yourname@gmail.com. The difference is, this alias is incredibly handy for filtering messages, as Gmail filters do see what's after the plus. Thus, if you sign up for every newsletter with yourname+news@gmail.com, you only need to filter on messages sent to that address, rather than on every individual newsletter sender. (This doesn't always work however, as many services don't allow sign-ups with emails that have optional characters, of which the plus sign is one.)

  • 16Power Your Search

    The quick way to do a power search in Gmail is to click the down arrow () in the search box, which produces the search dialog box seen above. But Gmail supports many search operators.
    For example, type "in:trash" and "in:spam" to include those folders in a search (they're usually skipped). Or restrict a search to just "in:inbox." Use "label:" followed by the label/folder name to only search that folder. The "filename:" followed by an actual file's name finds specific attachments.
    Use a minus sign (hyphen) to search one thing and not another: "dinner -movie" would only find messages that say "dinner," but skip any mentioning "movie." The other Boolean operator supported is "OR" (type it in all caps), but the full list has many more options.

  • 17Customize Your Gmail Inbox Display

    This tip is more about turning off a feature than activating it. The tabbed interface was introduced by Google in 2013 as a way to file items in your Gmail inbox auto-magically. The tabs each have a category: Primary (which is your typical inbox), Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. Yes, that's a "category," not a "label"—they're not the same thing.
    If you feel like you're missing some messages, it might be because Gmail is sticking them in the latter categories and you haven't clicked the tabs. You can kill the tabs by clicking Settings () > Configure Inbox. Pass the cursor over each option to see examples of messages that might end up in these tabs. Uncheck each tab you don't want in use. Note, the categories only affect messages in the inbox—not what's already archived.
    This tabbed setup is the default inbox setting, but you can change that. Hover over the word Inbox on the top-left, and an arrow will appear. Click it to select between Important first, Unread first, Starred first, or Priority Inbox. Those first three options will display those types of messages at the top of your inbox. Priority Inbox automatically filters incoming Gmail messages to place the most important messages up top, followed by starred emails, and then everything else underneath.

  • 18Response in a Can

    Stop typing so much, especially the same message over and over. Canned Responses are a must for repeated, redundant, repetitive emails. Turn it on via Settings > Advanced > Canned Responses (Templates) > Enable. Scroll down to Save changes, and your browser window will re-load. Create a new email and type up a canned response. Click the ellipsis () in the lower-right corner of the message and select "Canned responses." Here, you can save the message you just typed as a canned response, or apply an already saved canned response to the current window. If you re-write the canned reply, you can re-save it with the same name for future use.

  • 19Smart Reply and Smart Compose

    Smart Reply is a machine learning tech that prepares three, short appropriate replies to messages you receive. A single tap on the offered reply adds it to the response window, where you can send it off or write more. It appears in the Gmail apps for iOS and Android as well as on the desktop web interface. If you find these suggestions annoying or puzzling, turn them off via Settings > General > Smart Reply > Smart reply off, and then scroll down to save changes.
    Similarly, Smart Compose will suggest words or phrases to use as you type an email. If you type, "I hope you," for example, you could see "are well" appear in grayed-out text. If that's what you meant to say, hit the tab button, and Gmail will automatically insert "are well" into your email. If not, just keep typing, and the suggestion will disappear. To turn this off, head to Settings > General > Smart Reply > Smart Compose > Writing suggestions off and scroll down to save changes.

  • 20Google Stores ALL The Images

    When you get an email with an embedded image, it's typically like a web page—the image loads from the source. Not on Gmail. In 2013, the service began caching all the images that go through its system. When you load an image in a Gmail message, it's coming from Google's servers.
    In theory, this makes it harder to scammers to insert malware into emailed images, but that's not always the case. If you're concerned about it, go to Settings > General > Images, check "Ask before displaying external images," and save your changes. It'll help messages load faster, but if you're the one sending emails with images attached, it won't stop Google from caching them. So if your images are confidential or proprietary, and you don't want them on Google's servers for whatever reason, find another way to send them.
  • Sign Out Remotely

    21Sign Out Remotely

    You can access Gmail from multiple computers, smartphones, and tablets at the same time. Sometimes, you might stay signed in when you don't mean to (on, say, a public computer), or worse, suspect someone of using your account behind your back (turn on two-factor authentication to avoid that). On the desktop, scroll down to the bottom of your inbox. In the fine print at the bottom of the page it says Last account activity followed by a time. Click the Details link underneath it to see all the activity for the account. Click the button to sign out of all the other sessions in use.

  • 22Back Up Every Message

    Should you trust Google to always save all your important messages, not to mention contacts and attachments? Of course not. Thankfully, Google Takeout lets users download their entire Gmail data set, in standard MBOX format, which you can view later with an email client like Thunderbird. You don't have to get all of your mail; grab only certain labels or categories by clicking All mail data included, if you prefer.

  • 23Download Only One Message

    If you've got a message with particular formatting or attachments you want to send on, but need to do it via another email service, the download message option (found under the ellipsis  menu) downloads a single message into an EML format, which is supported by all email clients, like Outlook, Thunderbird, and Apple Mail.

  • 24Hit the Mute Button

    For email threads you want to banish, hit the mute button. In your inbox, click the box next to the thread in question, click the ellipsis icon () up top and select Mute. The thread will seemingly disappear, but it remains in the archive even as new messages come in. You won't see any message in the thread again unless you are the direct recipient or you search for it.

  • 25If Mute Is Too Final, Snooze It

    If you just want to mute a discussion for a set amount of time, hover over the email or thread in your inbox on the desktop. On the far right, you'll see icons to quickly archive, delete, mark as read, or snooze a message. If you click snooze, the message disappears from the inbox and comes back after the length of time you specified.

  • 26My God It's Full of Stars

    Stars are how you give a message importance, signifying that it needs to be read later, requires follow-up, asks a question you can't answer at the moment, or maybe all of the above. Clicking the star on a message will highlight it and make it easy to find (under the Starred label/folder or search for is:starred).
    However, you're not limited to just a yellow star. Go to Settings > General > Stars and activate the option to use one star, four stars, or all the stars—then click the star icon over and over on the message itself to cycle through to the one you want.
    Need to search on a special star icon? Search "has:blue-star" for example, to find those with blue stars, or "has:green-check" or "has:purple-question" or " has:orange-guillemet" (that's the double carets: ), etc.

  • 27How to Select All Gmail Emails

    To select every message on a page in Gmail, you click the checkbox in the upper-left corner, right? Almost. Checking that box selects every conversation on that first page of results—and that's limited to 100 items max. If you want everything under that label, visible on the page or not, check the box and look for the link at the top of the results that says "Select all X conversations in 'Label.'"

  • 28Add to Tasks or Create Event

    If you have Gmail, you have a Google Calendar and Google Tasks account. Turning an email into a calendar event or to-do list task is a breeze: While reading the message, highlight some text, go to the More menu () at top, and select either "Add to Tasks" or "Create Event."

  • 29Get Attached

    The first trick for attachments: don't forget them. Thankfully, Gmail will pop up a reminder if your message includes phrases like "I have attached" or "I have included," yet you hit send without attaching anything.
    You can drag and drop files from Windows or Mac to a Gmail message. Images will be embedded in the message unless you drag the file to the tool bar below the composition window. Don't add too many. There's a 25MB limit per Gmail message. If you try to send too much, the files go to Google Drive and the recipient gets a link.
    If you are a big Google Drive user, attaching items that already reside in Drive is not only a breeze, they don't count against the 25MB limit. Click the Insert Files Using Drive icon () in the composition window's toolbar to pick a file to attach. This also gets you around the kind of files Gmail blocks, such as EXE files.
    Want the same thing for your Dropbox account? Chrome users can get it with the Dropbox for Gmail extension.
  • Establish a Delegate

    30Establish a Delegate

    You can delegate someone else to share control of your Gmail account, be they a company admin or your significant other. Set up the account under Settings > Accounts and Import > Grant Access to your Account > Add Another Account. The person also has to have a Google or Gmail account of some sort—their email address must end in the domain name that matches yours, be it gmail.com or a domain used as part of G Suite.
    If you go to the path above and find a delegate there who you didn't authorize, change your password immediately—you probably got phished.

  • 31Delete Big Messages

    If you come close to using up the 15GB of storage Google provides for free, and you don't want to pay for more, delete some messages. Search for "size:xm" where you replace the x with a number. The "m" stands for megabytes. Any message with over 10MB of size probably has some hefty attachments—save them to your hard drive (not to Google Drive—that's space you share with Gmail, so it won't save you anything.)
    Another option: run Find Big Mail, a service that automatically creates labels for all your plus-sized messages so they're easy to find. It's free for a single Gmail account; only G Suite users get charged.

  • 32Speed Up the Slow Gmail

    If the load time on Gmail in your desktop browser is killing you, you can speed it up. Look for the link in the lower right as Gmail's progress bar stalls. It says Load Basic HTML, and it will—it's just Gmail without all the funky HTML5/Javascript goodness. If you always want the slow version (because sometimes even Gmail loads too fast to hit that link), click the Set basic HTML as default view link at the top.
  • Serve up some Emoji

    33Serve Some Emoji

    Wish you could send little pictures in place of text in your Gmail? You can. Just click the grinning smiley menu on the compose window on a desktop browser or hit Ctrl+Shift+2. Click the magnifying glass () to do a search for exactly the right pictogram. The emoji don't always translate well—I sent a bunch to Yahoo Mail and it didn't understand the cat images at all—but between Gmail users, it may spice up some messages.

  • 34Unsubscribe to Everything

    Are you getting a lot of newsletters and other junk you don't want? Most have an Unsubscribe link at the bottom of the message, and you can and should use those. Gmail (mobile and desktop) also sticks an "Unsubscribe" link at the TOP of the message, right next to the sender's name, if it can detect the link in the message.
    For easy clean-up, type "unsubscribe" into search, and you'll get a list of every message that has the word listed. Go through each—it's as close as you can get to bulk unsubscribing without a third-party service. For more, read How to Unsubscribe From Unwanted Email.

  • 35Archive to Inbox Zero

    "Inbox Zero" is that marvelous zen state one achieves by having absolutely zero unread messages in an inbox. It's not easy, because email messages can be reminders of tasks or events. Worse, inboxes can be just like the inbox on a desk—piled high with stuff you've been avoiding.
    If you can't bear to mark a message as read in case you have to go back to it, or worse, would never, ever delete a message you might have to refer to later, you can still get to Inbox Zero. Simply archive the messages.
    That's what labels do—you are archiving messages under a label to find later. However, you don't need a label to archive messages. While reading a message or selecting it from the inbox, click the Archive button at the top (the file box with the down arrow), and the messages are stored out of sight by Gmail. Find them later with a search.
    There is no "archive" label, but you can look in the "All Mail" link toward the bottom of the left-hand navigation. Remember, archived messages still count against your Gmail storage—because you're storing them. If you want to actually be rid of them and their attachments, drag the message to the Trash label, where they will remain for 30 days before being permanently deleted.
    Better yet, get rid of frequently received and ignored messages that you can't delete, like receipts, by archiving them automatically using filters. Click a message, then go to the More  menu > Filter Messages like these. A form pops up that will auto-populate info about the message (like who it's from); click Create filter with this search, and check the options for where you want that message to archive. Best of all, click "Mark as read" so you never get bothered by it in the future.

    36Try Confidential Mode

    The new Confidential Mode for Gmail on the desktop gives you a granular degree of control over who can see your info in an email you send, and for how long the message is available. Turn it on by clicking the Confidential Mode lock/clock icon at the bottom of a compose window. You'll get options to set up expiration dates on the message; after that date, the message disappears and the person only sees a "message has expired" notice. You can also limit what the recipient can do, such as locking down the ability to forward it on, or download attachments. It's a nice new security option.

    37Right-Click for More Options

    One of Gmail's newest functions: right-click any message in the inbox or in a sub-label and you'll get a full menu of options. Everything you'd expect is there: reply, reply all, forward; the stuff you get when you hover like archive, delete, mark as read, or snooze. Plus, you can move a message to a new label; just label it so it stays in the inbox, and mute a message so you don't get follow-up notifications. It also lets you open a message in a new window, and find all emails from the same sender. You'll get an option to find emails with the same subject if you've turned off the conversation mode under Settings > General > Conversation view.

    38Sign Up for the Suite

    If you've truly embraced Gmail, consider making it part of your business—even if you're a sole proprietor. G Suite maps a domain name of your choice to your email and other apps (Drive, Sites, Calendar, and more) and costs as little as $60 a year per inbox with 30GB of storage for each users. Pay more to get more.
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