Email Management Using Gmail: Getting Things Done by Decluttering and Organizing Your Inbox With Email Organization Tips for Business and Home: Simpler Guides

By Ceri Clark

Are you drowning in too many emails? Are you spending too much time everyday sorting and dealing with your inbox? This second edition of Email Management Using Gmail is a practical guide for sorting out your emails.

These step-by-step instructions cover labels, filters and the great spam protection that Gmail provides. Whatever your priorities, the strategies in this book will help you to save time. This guide is all about getting it done, sorted and out of the way.

 

Chapters you will find in this book:

 

1. Quick-Start Guide for already full inboxes - How to declutter an already full inbox - fast.
2. Sending and Receiving emails - Find out how to make your emails really pop with formatting options while learning about discussions, deleting emails, composing, replying and forwarding. Also includes adding links, a signature, using spell check, and email etiquette.
3. Your Contacts - Learn how to use Contacts, how to add, edit, delete and restore contacts, star your contacts and group them using labels. This chapter also includes the import, export and printing of your contacts.
4. Email Organization with Labels - Organize your email with labels. Discover how to apply, create, customize, edit and remove them.
5. Filters and Blocked Addresses - Automate your organization by creating and editing filters. Learn how to delete them but also share them with friends. Block email addresses to stop receiving unwanted email.
6. Searching for, and in, Emails - Uncover Google's advanced search capabilities within Gmail itself. Find emails with an attachment and search through your chat conversations. This chapter also covers searching by size, by date, and even sorting by newest or oldest emails.
7. Keeping Your Email Under Control - This chapter covers strategies for time management including the prioritization of emails. Learn about starring emails, replying to messages, using templates, the inbox tabs, filters with labels, filter messages like these and how to unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters.
8. Spams, Scams and Phishing - Recognize spam, scams and phishing emails and how to deal with those types of emails. This chapter will also show you how to only get emails from people in your address book in your inbox.
9. Inbox Views - Find about the different ways to view your inbox to make you work more efficiently including display density (layout), Google's Categories and other inbox styles.
10. Creating Space in Your Email Account - Find emails with large attachments, converting or removing files and more advice on creating space.
11. Advanced Options - Discover Gmail's useful advanced options in their settings, which include Auto-advance, Templates, Custom keyboard shortcuts and the Unread messages icon.
12. Frequently Asked Questions - Questions covered here include;

• where to go to login to Gmail and Contacts,
• what to do if you lose your password,
• how to change your password,
• is a particular browser required to use Gmail?
• how to print email,
• how to remove the 'extra' inboxes like updates, social and promotions,
• how to remove email addresses when replying to all,
• increasing the size of the text in browsers,
• adding images to emails,
• how to login if someone else is already signed in to Gmail on your browser,
• and how do I add my Gmail account to Outlook?

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ceri Clark
• Release date: Feb 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201306601

Book preview

Email Management Using Gmail

Getting Things Done by Decluttering and Organizing Your Inbox With Email Organization Tips for Business and Home

Second Edition

Ceri Clark

Copyright © 2022 Ceri Clark.

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it the retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Click here for the full copyright and publication information.

Contents

Chapter 0 Introduction

How should I use this book?

What is email management and how will it benefit me?

How to manage your inbox. How to be an email ninja

What strategies will I find in this guide?

What is Gmail and why use it as an example?

Why Gmail?

Chapter summary

Chapter 1 Quick-Start Guide for Already Full Inboxes

Step 1: Set up Labels as inboxes

Creating the three inboxes in Gmail

Step 2: Filter your current emails

Modifying your Labels

Step 3: Action emails

Step 4: Create extra folders

Chapter Summary

Chapter 2 Sending and Receiving Emails

Discussions

Replying and forwarding an email

Replying to a group

Composing an email

Formatting your email

Other Email Options

Even More Options

Scheduling emails to be sent later

Deleting emails

Deleting draft emails

Deleting emails sent to you

Bulk Delete emails

Adding a signature to your emails

Adding a photo to your signature

Netiquette

Chapter summary

Chapter 3 Your Contacts (Address Book)

How to get to Google Contacts

Google Contacts from the waffle/app launcher

Google Contacts direct address

Contacts overview

Top navigation bar

Left navigation pane

Contacts pane

Create contact

How to add contacts

Adding a contact using an email address or phone number

Filling in the fields

Adding photos to Contacts

Adding Multiple Contacts

Editing Contacts

Deleting Contacts

Restoring contacts

Starring your contacts

Grouping your contacts using Labels

How to create a label

Adding your labels

Labels for Email Management

Importing and exporting contacts

Importing Contacts

Exporting Contacts

Printing your contacts list

Other Contacts

Google Contacts settings

The settings under the cog wheel

List Settings - The other menu

Duplicate contacts

Chapter summary

Chapter 4 Email Organization With Labels

Labels

Labels - what are they good for?

Creating a Label

Customizing your labels

Applying a Label

Removing Labels

Deleting labels and Hiding Categories

Chapter summary

Chapter 5 Filters and Blocked Addresses

Using Filters to avoid spam

Creating a Filter

Editing/changing a filter

Deleting a filter

Sharing filters with friends (exporting filters)

Adding filters given to you (importing filters)

Blocked addresses

Blocking an address

Unblocking an address

Chapter summary

Chapter 6 Searching for, and in, Emails

Searching in your labels

Searching for emails from a certain person

Searching emails you have sent to people

Subject searching

Searching for emails using keywords (Has the words...)

Removing emails from the search

Finding emails with an attachment

Searching by size

Searching emails by date

Sorting emails by newest or oldest

Search Operators

Chapter summary

Chapter 7 Keeping Your Email Under Control

Time management

Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize

Starring emails

Snooze

Replying to messages

Using Templates

Replying with a Template

Editing/Overwriting a Template

Deleting a Template

Using filters to automatically send Templates

Using the inbox tabs

Other Folders

Using filters with labels

Setting up filters from email in your inbox (Filter messages like these)

Unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters

Chapter summary

Chapter 8 Spam, Scams and Phishing

Recognizing spam, scams and phishing emails

A suspicious email address

A spammy subject

Spammy content

It’s too good to be true

An unexpected email

A familiar, but spammy email

Peculiar formatting and unprofessional language and actions

A similar logo

Your friend is on vacation and asks you for money

A stranger sob story

An email sent to you by yourself

Bank emails

You have a parcel and you need to pay extra to receive it

How did they get your email address?

What you can do

Delete website accounts you are not using

Use Gmail‘s ‘+’ extra email account name options

Do nothing

How to stop spam from reaching your inbox

Within Gmail itself

Only receive emails from my Contacts in Gmail

Preparing your Contacts

Creating the filter for your whitelist

Chapter Summary

Chapter 9 Inbox Views

The Display Density

Space between emails

Attachments

How to enable display density

Inbox types

Default

Gmail’s category inboxes (tabs on the homepage)

Important first inbox type

Unread first inbox type

Starred first inbox type

Priority inbox

Multiple Inboxes

Reading Pane

Email Threading

Chapter Summary

Chapter 10 Creating Space in Your Email Account

Removing attachments and deleting emails

Converting files to Google Docs

Photo size

Backing up Your Mobile Phone or Tablet

Empty your Trash/Bin and Spam folders

Chapter Summary

Chapter 11 Advanced Options

Auto-advance

Templates

Custom keyboard shortcuts

Unread Message Icon

Chapter summary

Chapter 12 Frequently Asked Questions

What is the address to login to Gmail?

How do I get to my Contacts?

Help I’ve lost my password, what do I do now?

Where do I go to change my password?

Do I need a special browser to use Gmail?

How do I print email?

How do I remove the ‘extra’ inboxes like updates, social and promotions?

How do I remove email addresses when I Reply to All?

How do I increase the size of the text in my browser and my Android phone?

How do I add images to my emails?

How do I login when someone is already signed in?

How do I add my Gmail account to Outlook?

Step 1: Enable IMAP

Step 2: Getting an App Specific Password

Step 3: Adding Gmail to Outlook

Chapter summary

Glossary

Index

Chapter 0  Introduction

What to expect in  this Chapter:

What is this book about?

How should I use this book?

What is email management and how will it benefit me?

How to manage your inbox. How to be an email ninja

What strategies will I find in this guide?

What is Gmail and why choose it as an example?

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Dear reader, thank you for choosing Email Management Using Gmail and welcome to the second edition! The new edition looks different and discusses Gmail’s new fantastic features, which I am sure you will love. If you are ready to explore the new look, then read on, you are in for a treat!

Do you sometimes feel that you are drowning in email? Are the emails coming in as fast as or faster than you can deal with them? Information overload is a growing problem in today’s fast paced world. You may be finding that important emails are becoming impossible to locate. This book aims to give you productivity tips and tricks so that you can take control of your email and reclaim more time for yourself and your family.

Albert Einstein once compared a cluttered desk to a cluttered mind. A full email inbox can be just as disconcerting. If you have hundreds of emails stacking up and more coming in every day, it can lurk at the back of your mind causing needless stress. That’s just if you are avoiding the tsunami of email, if you are actually dealing with them, you can spend countless hours reading, replying, classifying, archiving and deleting them! This book will show you ways that you can automate your email organization so you do more of what you like to do rather than deal with the monster of email overload. This book is all about getting things done, sorted and out of the way.

According to a Lifewire article updated in May 2021, there were over 3.8 billion active mailboxes around the world.

Gmail has over a billion users while Outlook has over 400 million.

With over a billion users, Gmail is the most popular email service available. This book is all about how you can get the most out of Google’s answer to email, the instant online way to communicate over the Internet. It is written to help new users learn the basics and discover features that are far and above better than the closest competition. This book assumes the reader knows the basics of using a computer and has used a browser.

There is some overlap between this book and A Simpler Guide to Gmail. While A Simpler Guide to Gmail is more comprehensive, it will go into every setting in detail, this book focuses on how to manage your emails better. Some chapters will be the same but there will be information in this book that is not in A Simpler Guide to Gmail and vice-versa.

How should I use this book?

This book is based on an online Gmail account, which I believe is the best email, but the ideas can be applied to most other email services. It can be read from start to finish but you can use the index at the back of this book to jump to areas which you might find more useful if you are already an email power user.

For the purposes of this guide, I have made a few assumptions. The first is that you have (or at least have access to) a computer, you are familiar with using a mouse and know what the internet is. You can use mobile devices to sort and deal with your emails with the excellent Gmail app but it is easier to setup your Gmail account using a browser to begin with.

I would like to add a small disclaimer at this point. Gmail and other email services are constantly evolving and while this book is as accurate as could be made possible at the time of publication, they can and will change. Features will be added and others taken away, however, the principles will remain the same.

In the ebook version of this book, the images may appear small due to restrictions laid down by retailer and/or download costs. I have tried to write the book in such a way that the images illustrate a point rather than show you how to do a task. For example, I will tell you where on the screen a button is and the image will be there as a visual clue but you should be able to find it from the written instructions. While the ebook has color screenshots, unfortunately the print book has black and white images due to the uneconomical cost of color printing.

If you have bought this book as an ebook, I recommend downloading the apps for PC/Mac programs from where you bought them (usually free) to view the book from your computer. You will be able to click on links easily and the images will be of better quality. If you are reading an epub version, then Calibre, which is a free ebook organization tool, (please see A Simpler Guide to Calibre published by Lycan Books for more information), has an excellent epub reader.

Some of the screenshots in this book may not look exactly as you see on the screen as you do the tasks described. This could be for a few reasons. The first reason is that Google has put so much on to a page that you need to scroll to see everything on there. In this scenario I have done a screenshot of everything on that page and spliced it together to make one image so that you can see everything in one go.

The second reason is that the web page will change depending on how big you make it. If you press the Ctrl key and scroll your mouse wheel, it will make your web page bigger or smaller depending on the direction you scroll. When that happens, the elements on the page rearrange so that they don’t disappear off your screen. One example is your email list. If you have your browser screen set to 100% view you should see the first screenshot in figure 0.1 but the second screenshot in the same figure shows the page zoomed to 175%. You may prefer the zoomed in or out versions but it is good to know that how you view your Gmail account, will change the way it looks for you. All the elements will be there but they will be slightly misplaced in the same area of the page.

The final reason that it may look different is that Gmail is regularly upgraded. This means it has got better over time but the look changes when you least expect it. Generally, the old functions will remain the same and the written instructions will remain true but buttons will move around the page and new functions will be added. A case in point is Contacts. The page changed as I was writing the chapter in previous editions. The screenshots were replaced and were correct at the time of publication but elements were moved around the page as I was writing about them. The instructions in these circumstances are a guide. They will tell you what to look out for and what the buttons look like.

What is email management and how will it benefit me?

Emails are an important tool in our modern world. It is a means of keeping in contact with family and friends, find jobs, shop, make business deals and learn about the world. They can multiply like little baby rabbits, hopping into your inbox until you can’t see anything but bright white fur. Seriously though, emails can become a deluge and email management is a way of taming it. It will save you time, reduce stress and possibly save you money when you find the perfect business deal in time to take advantage of it or if you are using it at home, get that (insert store of your choice here) deal for that item you have had your eye on for ages.

Email management is a mind-set, a way of looking at how you deal with emails. They are still going to come in, but with the right strategies, they can automatically be sorted, dealt with in a timely manner so you are master of the inbox rather than the emails controlling you. Using email management strategies, which includes time management, will make you an email ninja.

How to manage your inbox. How to be an email ninja

Does the thought of having to go through your unruly inbox make you want to curl up in the fetal position? Do you fear getting that email bomb that leaves you so many emails to go through that you spend an hour or two trying to read them all but at the end of it, you just wish the sender would get to the point? Have you been spending so much time on your inbox that you have forgotten who you are?

Email management is not something you will do once then you will never need to do again, it is to teach yourself a new way of dealing with email and it really is a mindset thing. Yes, it requires you to work at it, but once you learn it you can change your way of thinking so you don’t end up with that inbox of shame.

Email management is also the process of learning to manage your emails effectively and efficiently. There is more to it