7
votes

There is a great tutorial on advanced features for Gmail on the Become a Gmail ninja site. (Editor note: Wayback Machine latest archive that shows the intended content).

What are some other tips or little known features of Gmail that you use which help you stay organized, and which do not appear on the Become a Gmail ninja site?

Please only post answers that do not appear in the become a Gmail ninja list, I do not want to encourage a duplicate list of content.

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    I'm not sure why this is being voted to be closed. Yes there is another place on the internet that you can post tips and tricks. But that doesn't mean that this question does not belong here. For example there are hundreds of programming sites, yet a question about Microsoft Win32 APIs does not get closed on stackoverflow as needing to be posted somewhere on an MSDN forum.
    – Brian R. Bondy
    Jul 2, 2010 at 18:06
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    I voted to close because (a) this isn't a question and (b) if you really wanted to make a poll type question you should mark it as community wiki so people don't think you are rep-gaming.
    – Michael Pryor
    Jul 2, 2010 at 20:10
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    Should be Community Wiki.
    – George Stocker
    Jul 2, 2010 at 21:28
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    @Michael Pryor: I (a) Paraphrased the last line to be an explicit question but still say the same thing, and (b) I made the question a community wiki. Please let me know if there is some other reasons why this shouldn't be re-opened. I understand this isn't an ideal question with an objective answer but I don't think this type of question is explicitly not allowed. This question should be re-opened unless we also decide to close all of the following questions: hidden features of facebook, hidden features of flickr, and hidden features of Google
    – Brian R. Bondy
    Jul 3, 2010 at 1:24
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because see
    – pnuts
    Sep 9, 2017 at 6:22

2 Answers 2

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11
votes

Organize your inbox by placing "+" in your email address. Any emails sent to the email address example+webapps@gmail.com will be received by example@gmail.com, because Gmail ignores the "+" and anything after it. However, this "+webapps" is searchable in Gmail.

Using this, it is possible to set up filters to automatically sort emails based on the address that they are received at. So, you may give websites that will be using your email address primarily for notifications example+notifications@gmail.com while you give shopping websites example+shopping@gmail.com and have them automatically sorted into the appropriate labels.

This saves both the time it would take to create multiple filters for multiple sites (e.g. one for Amazon, one for Barnes and Noble, one for Woot that all apply the same label to your email) and is a more reliable method of filtering email than using the sender or the subject.

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    Looks at wall with Ninja List : #3 on black belt : Filter your email with personalized email addresses.
    – phwd
    Jul 3, 2010 at 18:09
  • I use this all the time. Especially when I need to make multiple accounts on a single site, but they check if my email address is already tied to an account.
    – Tyler Carter
    Jul 4, 2010 at 4:57
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    there are a distressingly large number of sites that believe that + can't be part of an e-mail address, but I usually try first anyway.
    – msw
    Jul 4, 2010 at 5:28
  • It (sort of) works with dot as well in that the . is ignored, so you can use a.bcd@gmail.com and ab.cd@gmail.com both go to the same user.
    – Gary
    Jul 7, 2010 at 22:44
  • @Gary Huh. I had the distinct memory of xyz@gmail.com being taken when I registered a new account for college communications last year with x.y.z@gmail.com available, which is why I had thought the period trick was phased out in an update to gmail. However, I now see that I can log onto xyz@gmail.com....must be remembering incorrectly.
    – Emory Bell
    Jul 8, 2010 at 1:08
1
vote

If you use Chrome: You can press Ctrl + Shift + V to paste non formatted text into the Gmail message box. Saves time rather then what I used to do is open notepad, paste there, recopy, then paste into Gmail.

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