Are you a power Gmail user? If not, these 6 little known, yet useful Gmail tips can get you on the road to being a power Gmail user today!
- Import your contacts from Outlook, Thunderbird or Yahoo! Mail to Gmail. Don’t spend your entire weekend trying to copy your contacts over from another program or service! Just export your contacts as a .csv file and upload to Gmail. You can upload up to 3,000 contacts at a time. Here’s a detailed how-to on importing contacts using this method.
- Use the vacation responder to automatically send messages to contacts. You do not have to be on vacation in order to use the vacation responder. If I am facing a deadline and too busy to talk, I will set up my vacation responder to let people know that I appreciate their email and I will get back to them within a certain timeframe. This sets the expectation for them that I am not ignoring them and I will get back to them soon. My co-workers, family and friends appreciate it. You could also use the vacation responder to send “update” messages while you are away on vacation - change the message and let people know how much fun you are having!
- Save time when sending messages to groups by creating groups in your contacts list. Stop typing in the first few letters of the name or email address of 20 different people that you send those neat and crazy forwards to every day! Just create a group called “Forwards” and add them to the group. Now, you can just type “Forwards” and Gmail will do the rest. Check out the details for specific instructions on how to create groups within Gmail contacts.
- Mute conversations that are either out of hand or you aren’t interested in. My family and friends “group email” each other all day, every day. Sometimes, the topic is nothing I want to talk about or have an interest in, so pressing “m” on my keyboard allows me to mute the conversation. All subsequent emails are automatically archived, and search-able by searching for “is:muted”. Filters still apply and you can unmute a conversation if you want to join in later.
- Update your Web Clips to show your favorite RSS feeds and news clips right above your Gmail inbox. Gmail has many options available under the Settings menu, but you can add your own urls, too. The clips are shown randomly, and they are also clickable, so you can visit a blog directly from your email inbox or read up on some interesting news without typing in the URL everytime.
- Create filters with multiple actions, to save time and keep your inbox clear. You have several options available to you, so use them! Coupled with the label system, you can create all types of filters that will make it easier to manage your incoming and existing mail. And you can also modify Gmail filters if you find it necessary.
- Download Gmail Cheat Sheet to learn and master keyboard shortcuts. You might be surprised how much faster you can get while working on Gmail if you use shorcuts. You can download printable one page long Gmail cheat sheet from here..
If you’re looking for more, check out our massive Gmail Tips article here. Do you have any other tips? Let’s hear it in the comments!
(By) Ellie, a graduate student and admitted technophile, who blogs at Ultimate Geek Girl.
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Filed Under: How-To ¦ Lists of tools
Tags: email, filters, Gmail, How-To, productivity
ah thanks for the tips. i need this
I think the last one sounds good. This useful feature, as I suppose, is not available in Hotmail.
Glad you included the filters.
I use the heck out of the Gmail filter feature. This is perfect for anyone who subscribes to email lists or who just wants to automagically label certain type of emails with certain tags…even auto archiving them based of other criteria.
Those guys behind Gmail are awesome.
Vacation responders are obnoxious when it comes to mailing lists. Is it possible to make it respond only to messages that don’t have a List: header?
At this time, it looks like you can only set up the responses to go to everyone who sends you mail or just people in your email contacts list. Perhaps you can temporarily delete the group’s email address from your contacts list while you are gone then set the vacation filter to only use the “in contacts list” option?
Thanks. This motivated me to finally import my contacts in Gmail.
Ellie, thanks for these great tips. I had no idea about ‘mute’ functionaloty, it’s awesome.
Mute is one of my favorite features because I have a large family and they tend to get off topic after 3 or 4 email exchanges. The best part is that you can “unmute” a conversation and catch up, just in case someone sends something interesting!
Many thanks for the tips Ellie