4 Killer Gmail Features You Might Not Know About
I’m sure Gmail is the most popular email tool among Google Tutor readers. And we’ve written about it a lot. We’ve also talked about some nice stuff like Gmail add-ons to make you more productive.
Having said that, there’s just so much more to Gmail that you could glance at it for a few moments and come up with a new article idea. Seriously, in spite of using it for years, I continue to get surprised.
This post talks about four such features which are little known. I can bet most of you would find at least one feature out of these 4 which you are yet to discover. Check them out.
1. Mute Conversations
Did you know Gmail has a mute conversation feature that lets you ignore irritating message threads? It lets those messages skip the inbox so that they don’t bother you.
Example – I was subscribed to an email thread in a forum and I kept getting endless email messages. Since I just couldn’t find the unsubscribe option, I decided to mute the thread. Simple.
2. Forward All
One of the good things about the conversation format in Gmail is that you could easily forward an entire conversation thread to someone who’s just joined the discussion. It forwards the entire conversation which contains emails sent and received, neatly organized in a single email.
3. Bookmark Emails
Another brilliant feature. Each email in Gmail has a specific url that could be bookmarked just like you do with a webpage. So if there’s an important email you need to refer often, bookmarking would definitely be the fastest way to get to it (it would require you to login to Gmail, of course).
4. Search Options
This is something you might have overlooked for a long time. It’s not prominent in the interface to be honest. A small search options link beside the Gmail search bar. When you click on it, you get a number of options which could make searching Gmail so much more easier.
So, tell me honestly, how many of those you didn’t know? And what are the features you think you know and someone else probably doesn’t? Do share them in the comments.
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The most killer feature would be an option to turn off conversation view.
All great tips.
Another I just found yesterday is that when you right click on a message you get a pop-up preview of the message.
The best keeps getting better!
The other advantage of ‘mute’ over ‘delete’ is that it’s still there, so if you realise a while later it was useful – search can retrieve it.
I agree that a conversation on/off toggle would be useful – though that’s one of the reasons I download to Thunderbird as well as keeping online. (Also useful in case you need access to a message & you can’t get online for whatever reason)
I didn’t know about Forward All. I 1/2 knew about the Mute option. I heard about it for Buzz but I didn’t know it was for all emails.
I knew of number 4 but not 1-3. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Abhijeet, thanks for telling these features. You explained it quite well, but can you please elaborate the 3rd point.
I rely heavily on labels, so I am constantly using the feature to easily bring up a specific label without having to look through all of them in a list.
Just hit G and L and a small label search box appears and when you type in the name of the label you’re looking for, just press enter and there are all your emails with that label. This previously was a Labs experiment, but has since graduated to part of Gmail proper.
Also, I can’t live without the “Send & Archive” Labs feature.
nice one, mute was something that i was not aware.
I didn’t know about the mute function. Good job though.
Abhishek, here’s an example – lets say you’ve got a code or a some information in an email which you need to refer to frequently. Like, I have an email which is a set of rules for a project I am working on. And I need to check that quite often. Now, I could obviously keep that email open in a separate window all day, but if there are many such emails, it won’t make sense. Other options are starring that email or assigning it a label. But again, for more number of emails, this might not be convenient. Finally, you could search for it, but doing it every time?..well, it adds up to the overall time consumed. So what you could do is open that email inside Gmail, and bookmark it on your browser, like you would bookmark any website. Change its name to something better. Next time you need to check that email, just need to quickly go to that bookmark and the email would open up (provided you are logged in to Gmail).
Ohh, now I get it.
Applications? Yes. Killer? Why “killer”? Most of them is used daily. And:
1. “Mute”. A filter is more effective
2. “Forward All”: This is a basic feature. One who doesn’t know about it, doesn’t know how to use email.
3. “Bookmark”. A label is more handy.
4. “Search options” It’s there in all Google searches: web, pictures, videaos, etc. Its an essential tool to refine your search and is an everyday tool now when every search in Google returns millions of hits.
Killer? They are basic..
Saba Moshe
When will they have a “send at some future date and time” feature.
@Barry
I don’t know but it is a feature I’ve been waiting for. I know that there is a suggest a feature page somewhere but I can’t remember where is was.
@Saba Moshe
fine for you that you are aware of all these features, for me they where new, and I am using Gmail now for several years!
Such comments like “One who doesn’t know about it, doesn’t know how to use email.” could you leave in your bag…
Or do you thing all gmail users who did not now about those features are idiots?
do you need some reputation? … this is poor
@Tom
Thanks. Seems every site gets a Saba.
One thoughtful Abhijeet Mukerjee more than makes up for his rude trivia, so thanks for what you do well, Abhijeet.
Wow! Isn’t Saba great? Let’s applaud!
Some handy tips there…
The two Gmail-related things I find really useful are…
i) a Google Accounts plugin that works with Chrome and allows you to switch between multiple Google Accounts without logging in/out all the time
ii) setting up a QuickLink for the search term “is:unread”. This allows you to bring up all your emails that you’ve marked as unread. You know, the kinds of emails where you thought “I’ll have to deal with that one later…”
@Saba Well, as it is clear from the comments, those tips aren’t that basic.
Thanks @Herb, @Tom and everyone else for appreciating the article. Glad those tips helped.
Abhijeet, Thanks for the tips. I agree with Tom and Herb and suggest that ‘polite’ comments like the ones @Saba made need to be ignored.
Keep it up guys, there’s lots of us out here waiting to pick up nuggets.
That’s the thing. What might be obvious to someone is not obvious to others. There’s little point in dismissing a post just because you happen to know about it already.
Keep writing, Abhijeet, and don’t be put off by the odd snide remark…
I didn’t see the mute before…
but how do I setup filters to automatically delete specific messages after 21 days without having to revisit the filter every time? And how do I make the search results to display more than 20 messages at a time???
Cool post, I didn’t know about the “mute” function – I can see that definitely being handy in some cases
Wow, who peed in Saba Moshe’s Cheerios?
Kendal wrote:
ii) setting up a QuickLink for the search term “is:unread”. This allows you to bring up all your emails that you’ve marked as unread. You know, the kinds of emails where you thought “I’ll have to deal with that one later…”
OMG! THANK YOU! I just enabled the Quick Links in labs and put a link to “is:unread is:inbox”. This makes my life so much simpler. Wow. You rock!