Much of my day is spent dealing with considerably more emails than the average person!
Perhaps I know too much about Gmail and Google Apps Mail to be healthy?
But also means I’ve got cool tips to help you gett more out of your gmail account….or make you want to set up a gmail account!
What is Gmail?
Gmail is Google’s free webmail that you can access from any computer, anywhere.
It is one of the best web based email accounts you can use because of features like:
- Threaded email
- Ability to search easily both email and chat messages
- Labels and filters
- Lots of storage space
The Gmail+ method that every educator should be aware of!
Perhaps one of the coolest reasons why educators need to know about gmail is the gmail+ method.
Educators often don’t want their students to use their own email address for creating online accounts. Unfortunately most websites require users use unique email addresses.
The gmail+ method provides the solution!
How it works is you create one gmail account for your class.
For example, mathiscool@gmail.com or room16@gmail.com.
Then you use your one class gmail account with the gmail+ method to create each student account.
Gmail ignores any letters and numbers you add after a + sign and sends all emails to the one account while the web site where you are setting up the account thinks each is a unique email.
So for example, you might use mathiscool+seanp10@gmail.com, mathiscool+davep10@gmail.com and so on for creating their usernames and gmail will send all emails to the class gmail account mathiscool@gmail.com
Achieving Zero Inbox
The idea of zero inbox is you action emails quickly and once dealt with, you immediately archive them.
No more 1000+ emails in your inbox — weighing you down! Instead your inbox works like a to-do-list where you’re working through the tasks quickly.
And no stress! When you archive in gmail it takes the emails from your inbox and moves them into ALL MAIL.
This cleans up your inbox without deleting them, making emails findable when you search your email with keywords or click on a Label.
Achieving zero inbox is as simple as:
- Respond to emails, label if necessary, and then archive them immediately by clicking on ‘Send and Archive’!
- Any emails that you can’t archive, because they require action in a few days, add a label as reminder, archive them and use multiple inboxes as your reminder list.
- As notifications arrive that you no longer need immediately unsubscribe from their service or set up a filter to automatically archive them.
If your inbox is currently overwhelmed use select All and click on Archive to get to it under control!
Working with labels
Labels in gmail are a bit like folders in Microsoft Outlook except you can add more than one label to an email and keep them easily findable, whereas with Outlook the email is move into the folder.
Clicking on a label displays all messages in ALL MAIL with that label.
The idea is you use labels that are meaningful to you and help you sort/find emails.
Don’t stress too much creating labels! You can rename, delete or hide labels any time — so they are easily change.
Create a new label by:
- Clicking on More
- Clicking on Create new label
- Adding the name of the new label and clicking OK
Assigning a label(s) to an email is a simple as selecting the label(s) from the dropdown menu next to labels.
To make labels easier to manage you can create nested labels!
Nested labels allow you to organize your labels hierarchically.
All you need to do is:
- Go to Settings > Labs
- Enable Nested Labels
- Click Save Changes at bottom of page
- Create the parent label you want to use
- Create their child labels by using the parent label followed with slash (/) and the child label name.
For example, if you used the gmail+ method with your students you could create nested labels to manage the student’s account information, comment notifications etc.
Now all you need to do is click on the label for that student to find their emails.
And you can color coordinate your labels 
Colored labels makes them easiser to work with.
Keep an eye on your spam label
Gmail is very good at handling spam.
But unfortunately, as with any email account, legitimate emails can be sent to spam label.
By default gmail hides the spam folder so it’s easy to not realise legitimate emails are being spammed.
Here’s my advice:
- Change your gmail spam folder to show
- Regularly check your spam folder for legitimate emails and unspam any legitimate emails
To always have your spam folder display you can either:
1. Drag your spam label out of the More area and into your main menu
2. Or go to Settings > Labels and click on Show next to Spam
Now you’ll easily be able to see how many emails have been spammed and can easily check it for those missing emails 
Working with filters
Filters are great for managing incoming emails because you can set up filters that automatically label, archive, delete, star or forward emails based on keywords, email address etc.
For example, you used the gmail+ method with your students and set up a filter with their gmail+ addresses that automatically labels email with student name.
Creating a filter to label emails is as simple as:
- Go to Settings > Labs
- Scroll to bottom of page and click on ‘Create new Filter’
- Add the email address of the incoming email you want to label
- Click Next Step
- Select Apply the Label and choose the label from the drop down menu
- Click Create Filter
Working with Multiple Inboxes
Multiple Inboxes lets you have more than one ‘inbox’ in your default Gmail view.
This is handy for organizing emails that you can’t yet archive but need to keep for a few days while you’re working them.
Creating multiple inboxes is as simple as:
- Go to Settings > Labs
- Enable Multiple Inboxes
- Click Save Changes at bottom of page
- Now go to Settings > Multiple Inboxes
- Select your search query
- Set your extra panes position
- Click Save Changes
Favorite Gmail Lab features
Here’s my favorite gmail labs for extra features:
- Canned Response – lets you compose text once, save the text with the “Canned responses” button and then insert by clicking on correct canned response in the drop down menu. We use this feature for managing the signatures of the support team who reply from the Edublogs support gmail account.
- Google Calendar gadget
- Send & Archive – essential for quick archiving of emails
- Nested labels
- Multiple inboxes
- Superstars
- Undo Send – for all those times you wish you could unsend that email!
- Right side chat
And learning more about the people who email you!
Rapportive is an add on for Gmail and Google Apps Mail.
It shows you everything about someone who emails you right inside your inbox.
The instant you open up their email, if they have used it with any social networking site, you’ll immediately see what they look like, where they’re based, what they do and what they might be talking about.
Final thoughts
Everyone has their own secret ingredients for using gmail:
- What did I miss?
- What are your tips for getting more out of gmail?
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