We use Gmail filters to automate incoming mail. How do I change filter settings? Find Zen in your Inbox
At the beginning of October, Gmail launched the long-awaited feature of many users when displaying emails. This is another step towards improvement user experience working with Google's email service.
Gmail web client and up to support adaptive design had a sufficient number of features that set it apart from other email services. While each of them may not be unique individually, taken together these features turn Gmail into universal remedy when working with mail.
Let's look at a few useful points point by point. Gmail features, which make work more convenient and account management more productive.
1. Choose a theme and customize the look
Gmail offers three options for sizing the message list interface: normal, spacious And compact. Spacious will be convenient for owners of monitors with high resolution, and compact - for those who are used to a large number incoming messages.
Gmail also supports adding color themes - select the one you like in the “Settings - Themes” menu. Firstly, it is beautiful, and secondly, it is useful if you use several Gmail accounts - it will be easy to visually distinguish which one you are in at the moment you are.
2. Set up email filtering
Filters are very powerful tool Gmail for structuring incoming and outgoing emails. With its help you can quickly find all letters that match wide range parameters, and also assign different scenarios for such letters.
For example, by selecting one (or several) letters, in two clicks you can view the entire history of incoming messages from these addresses:
After clicking the “Filter similar emails” menu item, all emails sent from the selected address(es) will be displayed, and a menu will open where you can specify additional criteria filtering if necessary.
Suppose I want everything mailings They didn’t get mixed up with work emails, but they didn’t get lost either. At the bottom of the menu, select “Create a filter according to this request”:
- Skip inbox (archive): this way the email will not be shown in the inbox;
- Apply shortcut: You can select one of the existing ones or immediately create a new one.
- If you also select the option " Apply filter to matching email threads“, the settings will apply not only to future incoming messages, but also to existing messages.
Now all incoming messages from the address you specified in the filter will wait in the “Mailouts” folder:
Filters Gmail messages useful in many situations. For example, they are convenient to use when there are several hundred letters in your inbox and you need to filter out mailings from personal letters in a few steps.
3. Connect multiple mailboxes to one Gmail account
Gmail can be configured to accept mail from up to five additional email accounts. These do not necessarily have to be Gmail accounts - the main thing is that the POP3 protocol is supported (the vast majority of email services support it, so there should be no problems).
To connect additional mail account, go to the “Settings - Accounts and Import” menu:
Then the settings menu will open, where you will also be asked to specify the address to which you will receive a response to messages sent from this address via Gmail (by default, the response will be sent to the address you add):
Then a settings window will open mail server. Enter the password for the new mailbox and click “next”. If you are unable to connect to the server with standard settings, go to the mail client menu of the mailbox you are connecting to and check whether POP3 protocol support is enabled - it is often disabled by default for security reasons.
4. Add message forwarding to another mailbox
The opposite situation to the previous one is also possible - it is necessary that messages from an address on Gmail be forwarded to another by default mailbox.
This is done on the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” menu tab:
After confirming the forwarding request in the mailbox you specified, in the same menu you can select unconditional forwarding to this address:
If you only need to forward emails that meet certain criteria, Gmail suggests using a filter and clarifying the conditions.
5. Enable experimental features
In the settings, find the “Lab” tab, where the experimental capabilities of the service are located.
On this tab you can select and connect small but useful additions, which will simplify common but trivial actions performed in Gmail. For example, the ability to add the “mark as read” button to a separate menu item, or dynamically change the page favicon, showing the number of unread messages - is convenient when you keep the tab pinned.
Conclusion
We hope you appreciate it as much as we do ample opportunities customizing Gmail features for personal needs.
Gmail is not the only email client, and the list of its settings is far from complete. Share in the comments what settings you use. And if you use another email client, tell us what you like (or don’t like) about it.
If you find an error, select a section of text and click Ctrl + Enter or use the link to let us know.
Where to start?
Before optimization, my mailbox looked something like this:
Let's go straight away to settings(Setting), subparagraph " Shortcuts"(Labels) to get rid of a bunch of unnecessary “folders”-shortcuts - I’m a minimalist.
I have two additional shortcuts: Subscribe(subscription) for newsletters and Notify(notifications) for, suddenly, notifications from different sites. Those. These are the letters that are sent by robots and are less interesting. You can set your own colors for labels to immediately distinguish them from each other in display mode all mail (All Mail).
Then, opposite the shortcuts, select the items “ Hide(Hide)" or " Show if there are unread (Show if unread)" - Then extra folders without new letters they won’t be an eyesore. If necessary, you can always find them by expanding the list.
Save your changes and see how much more spacious the list on the left is!
Filters
Now the most important thing: filters! This is my favorite topic.
Previously, I deleted notifications from my inbox so that important emails wouldn’t get lost among the trash, I don’t trust Google’s “smart” sorter, just like alternative regimes inbox display). Now everything is in its place.
First, let's open some letter from the inbox that the robot sent us, in the example - from lifehacker.ru .
You can copy the address or just the domain with the dog, depending on the situation. Then go to settings, section “ filters" At the very bottom there is a link to create a new filter.
A window will open in front of you. We fill in the appropriate fields (in my case, the “From:” field is enough), and click the link “ Create filter» ( Create filter with this search).
Now comes the fun part. Here you need to check the box " Skip inbox» ( Skip the inbox) so that the letter does not become an eyesore; " Apply shortcut» ( Apply the label) - select the one you need, for me it’s Notify; " Do not send to spam» ( Never send it to spam) - and there is a hole in the old woman; " Do not mark as important» ( Never mark it as important) - rarely such letters are particularly important, but Google persistently marks them as such; " Apply to other emails» ( Also apply filter to %count% matching conversations) - this will place in the desired “folder” all other letters from the inbox that meet the filter conditions, thus freeing the inbox from such junk.
To some, it may seem like a big chore to sort through letters manually, but is it really that bad? We receive notifications and mailings regularly. Enough to spend 40 seconds to an incoming letter, and it never ever will not distract attention from really important messages. It took me about a week to gradually fill the list - exactly the period during which at least one letter arrived from each service I use.
In addition, the filters are very flexible. Look at the screenshot:
You can set up a filter both for a specific mailbox and for the whole mail domain, or on key phrase on topic. In the screenshot, I even set up a couple of filters for spam emails that persistently crawled into my inbox.
Additionally
Finally, a couple more less important tips.
1.
As the translator of the previous article already said, it is worth removing Web collections (Web clips) in the settings, since they are very similar to simple advertising.
2.
In the settings section " Inbox» ( Inbox) you can disable markers, they only create additional, almost meaningless icons in folders.
3.
Very useful to tie mail collection from other mailboxes in Gmail: Not only can you manage everything through one interface, but you can even send emails from other mailboxes directly from Gmail.
4.
Visit the section " Laboratory» ( Labs), where there are many interesting things: a counter unread messages on the browser icon, button« Mark as read", button for forced updates tied by POP-protocol boxes and so on and so forth.
5.
It wouldn't hurt to include text labels for buttons either: I'm often confused by bare icons.
6.
Finally, Soft Gray theme I like it better than High Contrast - less sharp lines, nothing superfluous.
In my opinion, Gmail has one of the most convenient web interfaces for working with email. In addition to just pleasant and user-friendly interface, the creators did not forget about the functional part. Chains of letters, creation of various folders, filters, etc. All this has made Gmail one of the most popular email services in the world. Many people do not know about such a wonderful feature as a mail collector. For example, you have one or more mailboxes on your domain name, but standard interface webmail and email clients you are not satisfied ( Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, The Bat). In this case, you can use a mail collector and process all mail through Gmail, as we will now look at how to do this.
- You need a Gmail account, the registration process is quite simple and I think it won’t be difficult to figure it out.
- After registration, in Gmail you need to go to settings
- In Settings, select "Accounts and Import"
- In this section, we are interested in two items: “Send emails as:” and “Check mail from other accounts (using POP3):”. They have links to "Add your other email address" and "Add your POP3 email account."
- In order to collect mail from another mailbox, click on “Add your POP3 mail account”. A new window appears in which you need to enter your mailbox address and click “Next”. Then several fields appear that need to be filled in:
Username
Password
POP server and port- address POP servers and a port for connecting to the server from which mail will be collected. You can find this information in the support of your mail service, it is usually published in the “Questions and Answers” section.
Save copies of received messages on the server— if the checkbox is not checked, after downloading letters, these letters will be deleted from the mailbox. .
Always use a secure connection (SSL) when receiving emails— should be installed if your email service uses a secure SSL connection to operate.
Assign a label to incoming messages- a label is a visual mark near the letter. Convenient to use to understand which mailbox the letter was sent to.
Archive incoming emails (skip inbox)— letters collected from this mailbox will be archived and will not appear in the inbox.
- Click “Add account”, after which Gmail sends a verification email to the mailbox you specified. The letter will have two verification options to choose from, a link and a code. You just need to follow the link and paste the code into the confirmation field. It’s easier to follow the link; the code is apparently sent just in case, in case the link is displayed incorrectly in the email.
- Well, that’s all, now our Gmail account automatically collects letters from another mailbox. If there is a need to respond from this or another address using the same Gmail, in the settings click on the link “Add another email address of yours.” Fill in the fields:
"Name:"— you can enter any data, for example your name.
"Email address:"- indicate postal address, on whose behalf we will respond.
Check mark "Use as a nickname."— this address will be used as an alias for your main address and when you send a letter to it, it will be displayed in your inbox, described in more detail in google help follow the link "More details...".
Enter a different address in the "Reply" field (optional)— by default, the response comes to the same address that was used for sending. By clicking on the link, you can specify a different mailbox to which letters sent to this address will be delivered.
Click "Next"
- Next we see several more fields that need to be filled out.
SMTP Server and Port- This information should be obtained from the postal service.
Username- usually this is an email address, this is the login to access the mailbox.
Password— mailbox access password.
Secure connection using TLS (recommended) and Secure connection using SSL— the second option (SSL) can be selected only if your email service uses this type of secure connection. Basically, you can select the first item.
After clicking "Add account", a verification email will be sent, similar to adding a mailbox to collect mail. We confirm and everything is ready.
When you receive a lot of letters from different recipients by email, over time it becomes difficult to find the ones you need from among the old ones received, if necessary. In this case, it is very convenient to sort letters by categories (folders or otherwise “labels”). In this article I will show how to do this using GMail as an example.
As an example. You often receive letters in the mail from the same addresses that you have to contact from time to time.
Yes, if something happens, you can try to find these letters by searching. This is easy to do, but you won’t always be able to find it. It is more convenient when letters are immediately sorted into the necessary folders upon receipt, or you manually sort them into these folders yourself. That is, you can set up mail filters so that letters from certain addresses are immediately put into the required folders.
This is easy to do. Let's look below at how to create shortcuts in GMail and how to attach them to them necessary letters manually and automatically.
It is in GMail that folders are called “Labels”. In principle, this is true, because all letters are stored in the “All Mail” section, and these same folders are links to the necessary letters.
Creating shortcuts (folders) in GMail
To create a shortcut, click on the corresponding link at the very bottom of the list of folders (inbox, sent, spam, etc.) on the left:
In the window that opens, you need to enter the name of the shortcut in top line and click “Create”.
If you have previously created several shortcuts, then you can specify under which of them in the list the new shortcut you create will be located by checking the “Place shortcut under” item and selecting the one you need there.
That's it, the shortcut has been created. Example:
Distributing emails to the required labels in GMail
You can distribute letters by the necessary shortcuts in GMail both manually and configured automatic mode. Automatic sorting of letters by labels is setting up filters in your mail, i.e. creating special conditions, depending on which the actions you need will be performed with incoming letters.
Manual distribution of letters
When you need to move one or more emails to one of the created shortcuts, just mark these emails in your inbox, and then select the shortcut to transfer by clicking “Move to”.
The same can be done by first opening the letter to read.
Automatic distribution of letters
You can set up special filters with conditions so that, for example, letters arriving from certain addresses to your mail are immediately included in the desired folder. Let's look at how to do this in Gmail.
To do this, in the mail settings there is a special section “Filters and blocked addresses”, where you can create new filter or change the old one. But you don’t have to go into the settings when you want to create a filter with the simplest condition (so that letters from certain addresses arrive in the desired folder) and for this we do the following:
All. In this way, by setting up filters, you can easily distribute letters to the desired labels without your participation.
Setting up and deleting created shortcuts
You can always change any of the created shortcuts or delete them.
To open the shortcut settings, click on the arrow to the right of it:
Through the appeared context menu you can:
Also, the ability to customize labels (except for changing the color) is available in the general “Settings” section of GMail, on the “Shortcuts” tab.
Conclusion
To make working with Gmail even more convenient, I recommend using the ability to sort emails by folders (i.e., labels) in Gmail and take this into account.
Filters in popular postal service Gmail is a great way to organize your work with email, set rules for incoming and outgoing messages, and generally save yourself from routine work by entrusting everything to scripts. We have previously written about interesting opportunities customize the mailer settings for yourself, and today we will continue this topic.
1. Forward all incoming emails and archive them
If you have several Gmail accounts, but in fact you only use one profile, then there is a good filter, capable of redirecting all letters from all accounts to one main one. You can also mark them as read and archive them so they don't appear in your main inbox.
To achieve what you want, you need to create a new filter and insert the dog icon - @ into the “From” field. You can also simply put an asterisk - *.
The next step is to choose where to send letters, mark them as read, or send them to the Archive.
2. Autoresponder to email using canned responses
If you have email chains that require monotonous responses, for example: “I received the message, everything is fine. I'll let you know when I'm ready." or something like that, then you can create an autoresponder for such dialogues, which will send pre-prepared messages for you to respond to the user. If you have a lot of similar dialogues, then this method will save you a lot of time.
3. Sort messages by size and type of attached files
The standard Gmail filter allows you to filter out messages with attached files. It turns out that this filter can be significantly improved by specifying the size of the attached file. For example, you want to create a shortcut " Large files» for emails with attachments larger than 10 MB. To do this we will do the following:
In the search bar at the top open window Gmail enter the following value:
Size: 10m
After that, click the down arrow at the end of the search bar. A pop-up window for creating a search filter will open in front of you. In the same window, you can create additional rules for more efficient sorting of letters. Next, click on the “create a search filter” link in the lower right corner. You can then create a shortcut for this filter.
In addition to sorting by size of attached files, you can set a filter to recognize document types. For example:
Has:attachment .jpg | .jpeg | .png | .gif | .tiff | .tif
Has:attachment.pdf | .doc | .docx | .xls | .xlsx
Therefore, the same principle can be used to sort other types of files, for example zip, rar, iso. Also, to simplify routine work, you can send these letters to the appropriate folders or mark them with a specific label (Documents, Archives, Photos, etc.).
4. Setting up tabs for incoming emails
New interface Gmail, allows you to sort Incoming messages by graphical tabs or categories. If you are not satisfied standard settings Google developers, then you can create your own rule to change these settings. For example, letters from Twitter service by default they come with the “Social” mark and if this does not suit you, then you can change the rule.
To do this, click on the arrow in the Gmail search bar and enter the following in the “FROM” field: twitter.com. Next, at your discretion, make the settings provided by the standard filter.
5. Apply a filter to all letters stored in mail
When you create a new filter, it is applied only to messages that will come to you in the future. If you have huge amount old emails and you want to apply your new filter to them, it is possible to make such changes.
Create a filter and enter all the rules you want to apply, but before clicking the “Create Filter” button, check the box next to “Apply filter to the following email threads.” Now the filter will be applied to all your emails, both old and new.
6. Export/Import filters for different accounts Gmail entries
If you have multiple active Gmail accounts and want each of them to have your own filters, you can avoid the hassle of creating filters for different profiles. Instead, you can simply set up filters on the bottom profile, and simply export the settings to the rest. We'll tell you how to do this.
Go to the account where all filters are already configured. Next go to Gmail settings and go to the "Filters" tab. Below the list of filters you will find the “All” button; by clicking on it you will select all previously created filters. The “Export” button will appear in front of you. Now just click on it and you will download XML file, which contains the rules for all your settings. If you don’t need some of the filters for another account, just uncheck the box next to it.
To create filters for a new account, simply log into your account and go to filter settings. Then find the Import button and select the previously downloaded XML file to upload. Now all filters are available in the new profile.
7. Send yourself a to-do list with a specific note
If you send yourself emails with a to-do list, you can create a special filter for this with automatic marking. To do this, create a filter and enter your email address, and in the subject indicate “To Do List”. Now you can apply any shortcut to this filter or create a new one.
8. Use Gmail as an RSS Reader
After closing Google service RSS Reader, many began to look for an alternative that would also allow them to conveniently follow current news. We suggest you use, which allows you to convert the format RSS news in an email message and send them to your inbox. After that, you can simply create an RSS label and apply it to those emails.
9. Creating a disposable email address
Actually it's old way creating disposable addresses using the main one. You can add a + sign to your email address; anything following it will be ignored by Gmail. This means that you will be able to create disposable addresses email to register on sites that require it, but you wouldn't want to give them real data.
In order for this method to work as it should, you need to register, for example with the following e-mail: [email protected]. You will receive a confirmation email. Once you've finished registering, create a filter:
To whom: [email protected] Action: Delete It
Now you can be sure that spam from this site will not reach you.
Conclusion
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