Gmail tips and tricks
We use a lot of technology at work so I've put together some tips, tricks and hacks that might save you some time or just make work a bit simpler.
This post focusses on Gmail and explores some of the tricks you can use there.
I don't promise to revolutionise your working day, but if you can find at least one of these hacks useful, then that's progress!
There are loads of hidden features and tricks inside Gmail. Here are just a few.
Schedule send
Schedule send allows you to... well, schedule the sending of emails!
The usefulness of this tool is debatable, but consider the following scenarios:
- Phoebe likes to get up really early and clear her inbox for the day. She replies to some emails and schedules them to be sent later on in the morning.
- For whatever reason, Phoebe has to break her working day up and work late in the evening. She schedules all your emails that evening to be sent in the morning.
- It's the weekend, Phoebe sees an email from a student and quickly replies, scheduling it to sent on Monday morning.
If our fictional colleague, Phoebe, were to send all these emails without scheduling, how might the recipients perceive this? Might scheduling help shift others' expectations?
Snooze emails
Rain, rain go away, come back another day.
The Snooze function simply makes emails go away and come back later. This is a great way to help prioritise incoming emails.
You can snooze an email by either opening it, or selecting the message in your inbox (tick it) and using the Snooze button:
You can then choose from a few pre-set times or choose exactly when the email comes back.
Snoozed emails aren't gone, they just go into the Snoozed inbox in Gmail:
Canned Responses (Templates)
If your find yourself replying to lots of people with the same or similar reply, consider creating a canned response with message templates.
Simply write your message in a draft email, then use the options menu in the email to go to Templates > Save draft as template > Save as new template.
Then when replying to an email, go to your message options menu and choose Templates > your template
Email Filters
Do you find your inbox filled with unnecessary emails? Blackboard announcements, newsletters, flotsam, jetsam etc?
You could try setting up a filter for the more annoying ones and send them straight to a folder, or even the bin!
This video shows you how to make filters in Gmail:
You can also use filters to just quickly search for similar emails so you can do something with them e.g. move them or delete them.
Cleanse your inbox!
A clean inbox can be uplifting! Digital detox!
Do you open Gmail and sometimes just feel a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of emails in your inbox? Even though they are all read!
Let's look at some ways to reduce inbox clutter and breath a sigh of relief!
Delete emails - The University actively encourages the deleting of emails. The email system is not a filing cabinet and should not be used to store data. The more data we hold in emails, the more at-risk we are from cyber-threats. Added to this is more time that we may have to potentially spend dealing with future data-access-requests i.e. when students (past and present) request to see all the data we hold on them.
If you can delete emails, then please do so! The excuse "I keep emails just in case" isn't an excuse! If you haven't needed to access an email in a while, the chances are it won't matter if it disappears.
I like to clean up emails every year or so and delete the oldest ones. You can do this using the the search box:
- Click the Search options arrow in Gmail search bar
- Set your search criteria - this could be date-based as in the image below - then hit Search
- Select all the emails
- Hit Delete!
Archive your emails - Remember that your inbox is just a folder within Gmail. You can move messages out of the inbox so somewhere else to give yourself some relief from the clutter.
Using the Archive feature is a good way to do this. All Archive does is move selected emails out of the inbox into the mailbox labelled All Mail. You emails are out-of-sight, but still safe!
To do this -
- Select all your emails in your inbox (you will also need to choose the option to select all conversations, not just the one page)
- Click the Archive button
- confirm the bulk action (don't worry, you are only moving emails!)
- You may have to perform this in a few passes if you have masses of emails
- Sit back, relax and enjoy your empty inbox (for a while!)
- Look in your All Mail box to find old emails
In pictures:
But try to keep your inbox tidy! If it gets messy, you can just go on a deleting spree or archive everything.
Tasks, Calendar and Keep
I wrote about how the tasks app knits nicely with Calendar in the post about Google Calendar hacks.
Tasks is a nice little to-do-list app that integrates into both Gmail and Calendar. This video explains how to use Tasks:
Well, Google's sorcery continues!
Open up the Side Panel (on the right-hand side) in Gmail and you'll see a number of apps listed. If you can't see the side panel, you may need to click the little arrow in the bottom right of Gmail:
The apps you see from top to bottom are:
- Calendar
- Keep
- Tasks
- Contacts
I've covered Tasks above, so I'll explain the Calendar and Keep* "mini" apps. (Leaving Contacts for now).
*Keep is a little "notes" app built into Google Apps. It's very useful. You can use it to jot down quick notes, reminders, lists (I use it when I go shopping, you can tick things off), add images, record voice memo, draw things. It's searchable, even voice memos!
Opening these apps inside Gmail (without any emails open), allows you to use them normally, but squished into a mini panel down the side.
Where's the magic then? The magic comes when you use the Calendar or Keep mini-app while you are reading an email. Creating a note or Calendar entry while you have an email open will create the note or calendar entry based on the email:
