If you’ve been using Gmail just to send and receive emails, perhaps it’s time to up your game and look at these 8 Gmail features that can be very useful when you want to be more organized and detail-oriented. It’s time to change your title from "basic" to "advanced" user!
1. Undo the sent email. It happens all the time; you either forget an important piece of information or forget to include that one important person as one of the recipients. Fret no more. Simply click “Undo”. How? Once an email is sent, you’ll see a pop-up box in the lower left-hand corner of Gmail that reads “Message Sent". Next to it, there are two options available – the “Undo” and the “View Message” buttons.
If you need more time to decide whether to undo or just go with it, you can always adjust the amount of time you need before this option disappears. To do so, just go to Settings > See all settings > Undo Send and choose your cancellation period of 5, 10, 20 or 30 seconds.
Once adjusted, save the setting and now you have more time to avoid mistakes in the future.
2. Can’t find exactly what you’re looking for? Here’s the solution!
Just use the advanced search! Say goodbye to those days when you had to scroll down one by one just to find that email from a fortnight ago. Yikes! What a waste of time. If you have thousands of emails cluttering your inbox, you need to use this tip to narrow down your search.
Simply type from: in the search bar and someone’s email to filter out other senders. This will help you revisit past threads, even those from months ago. You can also type subject: to look up a particular word in the subject line. For example, subject: collaboration. Then you will see all those emails with the word “collaboration” in their subject line.
3. Useful filter tip!
Do you know that by inserting full stops into your email address, you can filter messages from different senders? If you have been subscribing to different streaming platforms or newsletters, you can use this tip to help you categorize your emails accordingly.
Example: if your email address is muffin@gmail.com, just go to your account and add a plus (+) sign or a full stop ( . ), such as muffin+netflix@gmail.com
All corresponding emails from your Netflix subscription enter your Gmail inbox by default, which can be cluttered. But now you can easily filter those emails into specific categories or quickly search for them through the search bar.
If you start receiving emails that you didn’t sign up for and they contain your custom plus sign, it might mean that the services or companies that you signed up for have been sharing your info with a third party. Be careful!
4. Schedule your email delivery time. You don’t need to be in front of your laptop each time you need to send an email. Instead, just schedule your email delivery time so you can still get the job done even when you’re out running your errands. How? Right next to the “Send” button, tap the downwards arrow, and you’ll see a pop-up that says “Schedule send”. Click the button so you can see a list of suggestions for when you want to send the email, or just customise the time and date. You can also cancel and reschedule anytime. Easy!
5. "Mute and archive it!"
When you are no longer a part of an email conversation and it becomes irrelevant to you, just mute the conversation. Open the email thread and click on the three dots to open for more options. Choose “Mute” and the email thread will be automatically removed from your inbox and into the archives. Voila!
6. Confidential mode adds an extra layer of security.
In order for you to protect sensitive data or send a confidential message, you can use the confidential mode. This means your recipient would not have the option to forward, copy, print or download your email or attachments.
After you have crafted your email, click on the small icon at the bottom that shows a clock in front of a lock that says “Toggle confidential mode”. You can set the message expiration date and/or require a verification code through SMS before someone can open the email.
7. Accessing your email when you’re offline Yes! It’s possible. You can still send emails even when you’re not connected to the internet. Head over to Settings > See all settings > Offline and click on “Enable offline mail”. Save the changes, and you’re all done.
8. Share your inbox with someone. What if you’re too busy and don’t have time to read or re-organise your emails? Easy. Just share your inbox with someone you trust without compromising on sharing your password. Grant the trusted helper access to your Gmail account where they can filter your emails, archive them and use labels to organize them. They can also send, read, and delete emails for you. Just go to Settings > See all settings > Accounts > Grant access to your account. Enter the email address of the person-in-charge and follow the simple instructions to allow access.