57 Ways to Get the Most out of Gmail

• Use keyboard shortcuts. Gmail users can speed up their emailing with a few simple keyboard shortcuts. All users have to do to activate these shortcuts is go into the settings menu and turn them on. Then a simple keystroke can open a new email, flip through messages and take you to all areas of your account. This can save time and make it so that you never have to take your fingers off of the keyboard to do anything.
• Use the advanced search feature. It only makes sense that Google, the most popular search engine, employs powerful search capabilities in its email client as well. Like standard Google searches, there are a number of tricks you can employ to more easily find what you're looking for. You can check out this list of query words from Google, or you can get some pointers here on how to find just what you're looking for each time.

Sending and Receiving

• Use the mute function. Sometimes even the most well meaning of friends include you on conversations you could care less about. These emails don't have to keep coming up as new mail in your inbox, however, and you can just tune them out with the mute button, a little known feature of Gmail.
• Auto-forward certain messages. If you've got multiple email accounts or if you just want to send certain types of messages to a particular account, you can use Gmail's forwarding capabilities. You simply just need to set up filters that include the addresses you want to forward from and to, and voila, your mail goes where you want it to with very little effort on your part.

Organization

• Back up their messages. While your messages are fairly secure residing online, there is always the chance that something could happen to them. If you have important information stored on them this could be disastrous. There are a number of ways you can back up your Gmail so that it's accessible both online and off.
• Can easily find unread messages. Sometimes you may skip over unread messages, and it can be a pain to find them when you go back later and want to read them, especially if you get a lot of email. There is an easy way to find all your unread messages, however, using the search feature. This should bring up all unread messages quickly and easily, saving you the trouble of hunting for them.

Extensions

• Drag files into Gmail. Don't make sending attachments inefficient by searching through files to find what you need. Just use this extension to drag and drop files right into an email to send them.
• Integrate with GTD. If you're trying to make your Gmail more productive, why not make everything in your life more productive at the same time by integrating a popular GTD program right into Gmail with this to-do management extension.

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