Email is ubiquitous with your workflow, no matter what profession or field you find yourself in these days. I’m sure many already have their routine down-pat as for managing their emails. No? Your inbox looking pretty crazy these days? Well, Gmail has a few features I’m sure you haven’t mastered just yet (or maybe never even heard of!)
Gmail recently came out with Inbox
What is inbox? Even more work for me to manage? No! A smoother, easier way to keep a lid on your emails. To be honest, when I first saw inbox, I said to myself–this is a great design, but poor functionality. But in the last few weeks I gave it another go, and found it quite useful. By going to inbox.google.com you can switch over to the new view, with some great features. One feature that I find oh-so-helpful is the ability to save anything you’re looking at on the web, right to your email. With the Inbox for Gmail Chrome extension, you can just click the icon in the upper right of your Chrome window, and either pin the website to your inbox, or email the link to someone. SUCH a time saver! Then when I want to go back to that website or neat thing I saw, there it is! All in the same place I go to look at everything else. I invite you to give this new feature a try.
Use labels to keep your sanity
This isn’t a new feature by any means, and somewhat resembles the old school folders used in things like Outlook to organize your emails. It allows for you to name labels and sub-labels, giving each one a specific color for easy identification. Of course, the easiest bet (at least for me) is just to go to the search box in the top of your window, and put in a few good keywords.
Identify when you’ve been hacked
According to this article, it’s as easy as scrolling to the bottom of your inbox, and clicking on the link in the bottom right corner that says “Details”. Then you will see all of your account’s recent activity and verify whether or not you’ve been hacked.
Mute group emails
This one can be a life saver when you’ve been copied on a group invite or email that is somewhat irrelevant to you, and yet everyone keeps hitting Reply All, blowing up your inbox ALL. MORNING. So instead, simply go to the three little dots that show More Options on a given email, and select “Mute”. You can thank these folks for the suggestion.
Amanda M. Orozco 