Tech-World Blog

If your an avid user of the email provider gmail whether you access it from thunderbird, outlook , eudora or the web your inbox can get pretty bloated with messages , spam, etc. Here’s some of my tips to organizing and maintain a clean and efficient gmail environment.

FILTERS

Filters are one of the most useful organizing tools in email providers anywhere , whether it be gmail interface , thunderbird etc.

Filters essentially look for certain keywords, subjects, to’s, or from’s and then filter it somewhere.

EXAMPLE- Filter – Subject -Has keyword “Newegg” - Move message to “Online Sales” folder

that way all your messages are in their folders as they come into your inbox.

Other examples for filters can be

Twitter – Online Sales-  Spam-  Social Networks etc…

Labels

Labels , do as they’re called they label certain messages and can work in conjunction with filters.

Example of a label

Daily Maintenance

Even with all these tools at hand filters, labels etc. It’s nothing if you don’t do daily maintenance on your inbox.  My method is as follows:

*Check Mail   – Take Action =Delete, Keep in Inbox (archive) ,Reply etc, – Organize remaining Content ( so whatever you have left in your inbox whether it be conversations or reply, you can then set labels etc to keep your inbox and messages organized.

Handling Multiple Inboxes

Many people now use multiple gmail accounts for reasons like Personal Account , Business account etc. Having too many accounts can get hard to manage. Now what if you could manage all accounts within one inbox, it would make everything easier to manage.

Here’s where the new google labs feature ” Multiple Inboxes” comes into play head over to the google labs and enable it. Then go into the settings and set up access to your other account this will require confirmation on both ends.

My Method for handling my two accounts go as follows:

My two emails : adrianstech@gmail.com & kidgurucenter@gmail.com

I first go into adrianstech@gmail.com and set it to forward all messages to kidgurucenter this requires confirmation , after that i set a filter in kidgurucenter’s settings to label any messages from : Adrianstech@gmail.com  and then tell  the multiple inboxes plugin to put only content from that label. That way i have two inboxes in one panel.

Sound a little confusing her is my video tutorial explaining it.

Forwarding/Imap/POP

My last tip is covering forwarding if you ever wanted your inbox to forward your message to another address or for example you wanted your email to forward to someone else in your business Well Gmail makes it easy to set it up , just go to settings- forwarding options and put in the email and get your confirmation on the other account and your good to go.

Last but not least Imap/Pop services, all this does is push your email to clients on your desktop like – Thunderbird or outlook , its more trickier to set up but heres my guide for thunderbird.

Now that you have various tips and tricks to keeping your gmail inbox organize all you got to do is set aside time to GET EVERYTHING DONE and after that just keep your system going as you get new mail.

Always remember to these steps as well

-Empty Trash

-Empty Spam Folder

and of course try other things to make Gmail more a home environment for you,

-Set A personal theme

-Try out other Google Lab Plugins

-Try out Google Chat with contacts

etc…

Hope you enjoy these tips, and hope they help you in organizing your inbox.

My email is AdriansTech@gmail.com