Using Gmail Filters

Filters is an essential feature of Gmail that compliments Labels to better organize your emails. Here I try to help you on how to get the most of this cool feature in Gmail.

As the name says Filters can be used to filter out your emails based on a certain criteria. The criteria can be like where the email came from, whom the email addressed to, having certain words in the email subject, having or not having certain words in entire email.

You can create a new filter from Setting > Filters > Create New Filter

Use Test Search to make sure your filter criteria is fetching only those email you expected. Now click on Next Step to see the Options of what you can do after filtering those emails meeting the search criteria.

You may prefer to Archive them, mark them as Read mail, assign a Star, apply a Label (this is really cool), Forward it to another email address (quite useful if your office does not allow accessing Gmail, you simply forward to your office email address those important emails) or Delete them. You also have an option to apply the filter to any existing emails that meet the filter criteria.

If you combine the power of filters with Gmail aliases, it will be very easy to organize your email and especially filter out any spam from Inbox. When you fill online forms to subscribe / register on various web sites, use your Gmail alias and then create a filter to apply a label to the email sent to that alias and also prefer to Archive it. This way you can avoid unwanted or not so frequently used emails appearing in the Inbox instead have them moved to a folder (aka Label).

This powerful combination of Filters & Labels makes your life easy in organizing your Gmail mailbox.

Using Labels in Gmail

Labels in Gmail are like folders in Yahoo, Hotmail and other such mail services. You can assign one or more labels to a conversation. Rmember that by the very nature of Gmail, messages with same subject line are grouped as a Conversation.

Applying labels to conversations makes them easy to access at a later time using the label names. For example you can apply a label name Friends to all emails received from your friends or apply a label name Family to all mails from family members/relatives etc. You also have the convenience to remove a label from a conversation and assign to some other etc.

Gmail also allows assigning colors to label names so that they are easy to identify among a long list of conversations. Here is a screen showing colored labels applied to different conversations:

As you might have noticed, there is a label by name Inbox which is assigned to all the email received in your Gmail inbox. Inbox is the default folder (infact a label) which opens when you first sign-in to you Gmail. To make sure you get to see all the new email, Gmail automatically assigns the Inbox label as the mail arrives into your mailbox. The only way to remove the Inbox label from any conversation is to Archive the conversation.

Like I mentioned earlier, Labels help in retrieving the required conversation quickly. This is achieved using the power of Gmail Search along with labels.

Let us say you have assigned a label international to all emails related to your international travel (like tickets booking, itineraries etc.). So when you have to retrieve information about your in-flight meal preference, your Gmail search string can be label:international meal.

Note that words like meal are so common and simply searching for them can bring up too many results from your huge mailbox. So using the label:international query modifier, you are limiting the search to emails with the label name international assigned.

You can try even more complex search like label:international -label:domestic +meal -dubai which brings up all conversations having the word meal but not the word dubai and assigned with the label international but not assigned with the label domestic.

Remembering the Google Search lessons? Yes, most Google Search tips get applied here.

Gmail allows Aliases

Gmail allows aliases to receive email into the same mailbox using an apparently different address. Unlike traditional aliases, Gmail offers email addresses of the syntax your.username+words@gmail.com.

To make it more clear a Gmail alias is created with your Gmail username suffixed by any number of words that are separated by the + sign. For example, my Gmail address is pranav.yaddanapudi@gmail.com. Now some of the valid aliases to this email address are pranav.yaddanapudi+feedback@gmail.com , pranav.yaddanapudi+makingiteasy+feedback@gmail.com and pranav.yaddanapudi+makingiteasy+blog+feedback@gmail.com.

Apart from allowing + sign to create aliases, Gmail also allows usage of . (dot) to create aliases. Because Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, adding or removing dots from a Gmail address won’t change the actual destination address. Messages sent to yourusername@gmail.com, your.username@gmail.com and y.o.u.r.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com are all delivered to your inbox, and only yours.

And now to answer your quick question in mind, yes, you can combine the two techniques to create a hybrid alias to your Gmail address. Something like p.r.a.n.a.vyaddanapudi+makingiteasy+feedback@gmail.com
As you can notice, I used all the above discussed aliasing methods to create this email address which can very well serve as an alias to my Gmail id pranav.yaddanapudi@gmail.com.

Isn't it interesting to know that Gmail allows multiple (infact unlimited) aliases to your Gmail address ? So what are you waiting for ? Go surprise your friends and family with your new Gmail aliases.

In the next post we will discuss the amazing benefits of using these aliases to better Organize your Gmail.