September 2nd, 2009
This article was originally written in March 2008, updated with a few more things.
2 Hidden ways to get more from your Gmail
Now who hasn’t faced spam? It’s become a part of our lives dealing with Spam amongst genuine mails. Over the past few years I have heard various ideas as to how to deal with spam. Some suggested having multiple ids, say one for office one for personal use. Others suggest me to keep a separate id to giveaway to banks and other registrations over the internet. However with increasing number of online registrations and user accounts, say for me I have 2x Netbanking, 1x Facebook, 1x ISP Home, 1x ISP Office, 1x Digg, 1x StumbleUpon, 1x Cellular service, 1x eBay … the list is endless! So however my problem is that I now have over 18 email ids and it’s a mess practicing this method. So how about a single email id that lets you change itself every time you give it to someone? Oh yes its here in your very own Gmail!
Gmail has 2 unique (and hidden) features that lets you deal with this situation.
- Put any amount of dots (.) / ‘full stops’ between your email id, the mail will still get forwarded to the same account! For example: johnnycry@gmail.com is the same as johnny.cry@gmail.com / j.o.h.n.n.ycry@gmail.com or johnnycr.y@gmail.com.
- Add any suffix to your user id using a plus sign (+), and the mail will still land at the same email id. For example: johnnycry@gmail.com is the same as johnnycry+xyz@gmail.com / johnnycry+bank@gmail.com or johnnycry+isp@gmail.com
Now that’s really cool, isn’t it? But how do I use it?
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: gmail, gmail features, Google, smart user | 3 Comments
April 2nd, 2009
Google’s Autopilot is an amazing feature that replies to your mails. All you need to do is let google’s autopilot read few samplings of your conversations. Google understands your style of writing and then after a few simple settings, just gets on to work for you. Now you don’t need to read and respond to all your mails, let google’s Autopilot take care of it. I would love google to respond to all of the spams that i get in my gmail account.
When two of the gmail users have Autopilot on, the two gmail accounts enjoy mailing with each other up to three replies.
Via [Google] (Do check the terms of service)
Categories: Future WIP, Weird or not? |
Tags: april fools, autopilot, gmail, Google, joke, prank | No Comments
March 20th, 2009
Clicked the sent button too early? Ended up sending embarrassing replies to the wrong person? Forgot to attach that attachment? Well worry not; here comes the UNDO button for sent mails.
UNDO = cancel, annul, or reverse an action or its effect; “I wish I could undo my actions”
Personally this has happened to me many times; the threaded emails in Gmail can end up confusing you when you are discussing the same thing with multiple people (say a client and a partner). And just as you click that send button you realise that the mail has been shot to the wrong person.
However this new Labs feature allows you to UNDO a sent mail. Hitting the UnDo button will push you back into the compose mail mode. The feature works by holding all your sent mails by 5 seconds after you click the send button (this happens in background; so you wont be distracted); allowing you to UnDo your actions.
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Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: gmail, gmail labs, labs | 1 Comment
December 27th, 2008
Gmail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual file system around your Google Mail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium.
Gmail Drive creates a virtual file system on top of your Google Gmail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Gmail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. Gmail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag and drop files to.
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Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: drive, gmail, gmail drive, Google, virtual drive | Comments Off
July 8th, 2008
It’s been four years since I am using GMail, and still I love it as a brand new toy. No doubt, the service from Google means GMail scores amazingly on search. Even they say “Search, don’t sort” but searching and filter based sorting is what makes it competition killer. Even power users are not fully aware of all the search operators. Here are some tips I use to get most out of my emailing.
Searching with Boolean in Google Mail
- OR : capitalization matters, ‘OR’ term is used to specify to search for either of terms separated by the ‘OR’ word. Like for example I submit search as ‘Coffee OR Tea’ then I would get all the mails which contains word Coffee or Tea (Or both). We can use | as a replacement or even placed ‘OR’ terms in curly brackets ‘{}’ and the result would be same (though not documented) that means ‘Tea OR Coffee’, Tea | Coffee’ and ‘{Tea Coffee}’ will produce the same effect
- AND: is the default behavior for GMail, so wouldn’t necessary to put it search (but sometimes necessary to construct complex searches) again just putting SPACE yields the same result. For example, Putting “Mango AND Apple” (or “Mango Apple” or “Mango+Apple”) will search for mails, containing both Mango and Apple
- NOT: Ever need to exclude certain terms from results? Then ‘NOT’ is useful. It searches only mails in which given term is ‘NOT’ present. Example ‘NOT’ chat would search all the mails which does Not contain the word chat. We can use – (hyphen) for this or even ! (exclamation symbol, but again not documented)
e.g. ‘NOT party’, ‘-Party’ and ‘!Party’ will give us same results.
So we can combine these Boolean operators and play search, like (Mango AND Orange NOT Banana) OR Apple will give us results in which either word Apple is found OR both Mango and Orange is found BUT not Banana
For further searching GMail also provided with lots of keywords, and
syntax for using them is <Keyword>:<Search Term> (Remember: No space in between)
These keywords are
- FROM: is used to search sender. Like if I put ‘from:abc@xyz.com’ then gmail will search all the mails which are form abc@xyz.com
- TO: is used to search based on recipient of the mail. Example searching ‘TO:dumbo@gmail.com’ will give the mails which are sent to Dumbo J. Like wise GMail also have ‘CC’ and ‘BCC’ keywords for searching CC and BCC fields respectively. Use them in the same way for CC and BCC – ‘CC:xyz@xyz.com’ & ‘BCC:xyz@xyz.com’
- SUBJECT: will only search given terms in subject field in mail. Like searching ‘Subject:Quotation’ will search all mails in which subject contains the word quotation.
- IN: for restraining our search into specific folders, IN operator is used, like ‘IN:sent’ will search only sent mails, likewise ‘IN:inbox’, ‘IN:anywhere’ (when you want to search all the mails, including trash and spam which is excluded by default.
- IS: is word is used along with certain keywords to search mails, like ‘IS:READ’, ‘IS:STARRED’, ‘IS:SPAM’ etc
- LABEL: as you must have created many labels for filtering mails, you can use this operator for searching only specific labels, like ‘LABEL:forwards’ will search only mails which have forwards as label
- ‘HAS:ATTACHMENT’ is simple keyword to see if mail has attachment
- FILENAME: will search for mail with specified filename or extension as a attachment, like querying for ‘filename:ZIP’ will give all mails which contains zip-file in attachment
- AFTER and BEFORE: are only available for time line search, we can construct mails which are sent/received during specified time duration. Example searching for ‘AFTER:2008/06/30 BEFORE:2008/07/07′ will give all mails which are sent received on first week of this July
So these are all major search Booleans and keyword using which we can construct complex searches and yes all search can be saved as filter 
- Backup: setting certain words in subject and sending to own mail with good filter and our online backup drive is ready. Like I mail myself with subject: Storage and filter like
From:me subject:StoreThis then Archive and label it as Storage
- Block Users: I blocked many domain who are offering me what I don’t need
From:(*@spam1.com|*@spam1.com|*@spam1.com) then delete it
- Spam: I get irritated to see daily added spam to spam folder, I simply have set filter to auto delete all spam
‘Is:spam’ then delete it – If you fear losing genuine mails avoid this
- Forwards: yeah I have over 3000 mails in forwards section, useful for forwarding to others
Subject:(FWD | FW) then archive and apply label forwads
- Fetching mails from multiple ID is easy with GMail, I have 3-4 mail IDs and I fetch them using POP fetcher and classify them accordingly. You can use built in forwarding to fetch this but it might get problem sometimes if you are placed in BCC from that ID as GMail doesn’t support filtering based on mail headers yet.
- Media Center: you can make labels like MP3/ EBooks and movies based on criteria such as attachment type
Filename:MP3 apply label Music
- Feeds: You can also set filters on RSS feeds and collect all the updates in one place.
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: email, gmail, Google, shorcut, tips | 1 Comment
May 30th, 2007
Gmail now supports 20 megabytes of file attachments.
Google has updated their Gmail webmail service to allow their users to send attachments of size up to 20 MB.
This means that Gmail users can now send bigger files to their friends and relatives Competing services like Microsoft.
Categories: First look, Google |
Tags: Attachments, gmail, Gmail Wb Service, Google, microsoft | No Comments
