Can I have Gmail automatically add a prefix to the subject line when emailing a particular group?

Question

I would like to automatically add a prefix to the subject line everytime I send email to a particular group I have set up in Gmail.

For example, whenever I email a colleague, I want to add "Office:" to the beginning of the subject line. This is to help me and others filter out work email when using personal accounts.

I know there are other options to do the filtering (Gmail labels are great!), but not everyone is on Gmail and don't have the same kind of options. Also, emails tend to come from various different personal accounts, adding to the confusion. So it would make things easier if all emails went out as:

Office: Actual subject line

How can I set this up to happen automatically when emailing a particular group?

Answer 1

There isn't a way to auto-prefix subjects based on emailing a contact group. Note: This is different from Google Groups.

When you decide to email all/some people in a group, GMail will individually add each of those people to the To: line of the email.

Since I was on the kick, I tried setting up an email group ([email protected]) in my Google Apps for Business account. And while you can add members/owners to the list from there, you cannot customize the subject line for Apps for business accounts either.

However, using the Google Email groups from within apps may solve your issue. You can set it up so that people are only replying to that group email ([email protected]). This will make your replying easier and also make filtering a snap as well as not forgetting to include someone.

Answer 2

I use a some what different strategy for the same purpose:

You can add additional addresses in you account like [email protected]

When you send the mail you have to manually select this address from the 'from' drop down list. Users can build filters based on this address, and you can also specify different signature to each address.

Answer 3

What if you set up a Gmail filter to add a label to any message you send to one of your colleagues? That way, even if they reply from their random personal accounts, the conversation will still have the label, which you can then use to filter the messages wherever you like.

(Sometimes Gmail messes up the handling of replies from other clients and services, and doesn't put them in a conversation because they start with the wrong kind of Re: or something - but I think this would work 9 times out of 10.)

Otherwise to do what you're requesting there'll be some scripting and/or plugins involved, which would mean you'd always have to send mail from the same browser or computer - and then it'd take even more legwork to make the solution work from a mobile device.