A Complete Guide to Editing to Use Gmail Effectively

While apps like Slack and Teams have reduced our reliance on email, Gmail is still very relevant and important. According to a McKinsey report, the average person still spends 28% of the week on email. So it makes sense to organize Gmail to reduce clutter and increase productivity.

The number of emails we receive, especially from sources we don’t even remember being subscribed to, can be surprising. And then there’s the old but important emails that get lost in a sea of ​​new emails. Here are some quick tips and tricks for organizing Gmail emails and bringing sanity to your work life.

Let’s start.

1. Editing Gmail Inbox

Most emails end up in the Inbox; this is the main reason why it is so complex and overwhelming at the same time. One way to quickly find important emails is to change the Inbox type to show important emails at the top.

Stage 1: Click on Settings and select All Settings.

Step 2: Go to the Inbox tab where you can select the default view next to the Inbox type.

I suggest you try a few alternatives and check which one suits your needs:

• Default: Shows emails by date and time
• Important first: Gmail uses artificial intelligence to decide which emails are important to you
• Unread first: Edit Gmail so that unread emails are displayed first
• Starred first: Emails starred by you are shown first. Use stars to mark important emails/IDs
• Priority Emails: Google pays attention to the emails you interact with the most and uses this information to display relevant emails first.

There are other settings you should check as well.

2. Organizing Gmail by Folders/Labels

Gmail calls it labels but it means the same thing. A place to filter and store your emails to avoid cluttering the Inbox. I recommend keeping the total number of tags low and not going crazy with them. You can also create nested labels in Gmail, which means labels inside a label. It works almost like a subfolder.

We’re going to create a filter that tells Gmail to send a specific email or save it to that label.

Stage 1: Open the email for which you want to create a filter. Click the Tags icon at the top to view the list of available tags. It looks like a right-pointing arrow.

Step 2: You can choose from an existing list of tags or create a new one by typing the name directly at the top. You can also manage tag settings here.

For example, create a label called Reading Summary for all emails you receive from Medium or Quora, or newsletters you subscribe to. These emails will no longer appear in your Inbox and will go directly to the label or folder. If you don’t want to create a new label for this single email, you can also move emails to labels from this menu.

You can also color the code labels. Scroll through the list of labels in the sidebar and click the three-dot menu icon next to it to choose a color.

3. Organize Gmail by Size

Google offers 15GB of free space for all Google apps, including Gmail. Running out of space or want to do some house cleaning? Sort emails by size to find and delete emails that take up space but no longer serve any purpose.

search operator size:byte. This means searching for emails that consume more than 15MB of space. size:15728640. Command size:mb it also works.

At this point you can get creative and add more search parameters to filter results such as:

• size:mb are:additional
• size:10mb has:additional filename:doc
• size:10mb larger_than:5m smaller_than:8M

Try a few combinations to witness what kind of results you get and take it from there. Gmail will suggest some search parameters like date and time just below the search bar to help you find what you’re looking for.

Pro Tip: You know how we can create tags to filter emails. Did you know that you can use the #GoogleDrive hashtag to save attachments directly to a folder in Drive? Deleting the email later also does not delete the file saved in Drive.

4. Manage Tabs

Gmail comes with many tabs enabled by default. You may or may not need all these tabs.

Go back to Settings and under the Inbox tab you will see Categories. This is where you can easily open and close these tabs. There is no way to create new tabs or assign a tag as a tab. That would be cool though.

5. Organize Gmail by sender

You are searching to find all emails from a specific sender. It’s super easy and you don’t even have to open the email for it to work.

Right click on the email and select ‘Find email from addon’ to start the search. You should see all emails within a few seconds.

Google Mail Rocks

Gmail is one of the best designed email service providers in the world. There are several ways to customize it just the way you want it. There are also hidden features, keyboard shortcuts, and search operators you can use to find what you’re looking for. I hope the tips above helped you better organize your inbox. Maybe even reach zero inbox? Fingers crossed.

Next: Lost your Gmail emails? Here are some ways to recover lost Gmail emails and prepare for future disasters. You will never lose another email.