Ok, first let me admit that it took me a while to finally give up using Outlook and then Thunderbird as my email software and move over to GMail completely. It was hard to switch my mind away from all the folders I had created and used to store email from different groups or purposes. But I finally did it. Well, it did take the helping hand of my friend and Geek Guru, Jim (thedude.com).
I had been using GMail for years after I dumped my Hotmail account. The main reason then was the size of the GMail storage and their advertisements saying “never delete any mail”. But, once I changed over, I found so many other reasons to use it.
- I actually back up some very important files using GMail. This not only saves them but also makes them available to me from any computer I’m using.
- The Spam filtering. My ISP used filters, I used a separate filter, and my email software used filters. BUT I still got 50+ Spam each day. With GMail, I maybe get two!
So here are some handy Power Tips for old or new GMail users!
1. Import all you email addresses from Hotmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, Others into GMail. Go here to read how simple
it is:
http://email.about.com/od/gmailtips/qt/et083104.htm
2. Set-up labels for your email. This is where you start to use the power of email and see it’s benefits. Gmail has a handy shortcut down its More Actions ... menu. You can create a new label on the spot.
a. Click the More Actions ... drop-down menu with the message or messages you want to label checked.
b. Select New label ... under Apply Label.
c. Type the desired label name under Please enter a new label name:.
d. Click OK.
3. Now that you have labels all set up, you can start filtering! GMail can filter an email based on six criteria: From, To, Subject, Has the words, Doesn’t have, and Has attachment. Obviously this setup offers a lot of power for filtering your incoming mail. After you choose your criteria, you can choose any combination of the following options: Skip the Inbox (Archive), Star it, Apply the label..., Forward it to, and Delete it.
4. Ah, the most powerful thing I can do with GMail is search ALL my emails easily. Searching your GMail inbox: - Search operators in GMail work much the same as they do with Google. Type the operator followed by a colon, and then your search term. Likewise, you can exclude terms from your search with the hyphen (-). Examples – to:BaliPCAdvisor@Gmail.com to find all email to me; subject:Bali Advertiser to find any emails with that in the subject. The search operators allow you to limit the scope of your search to the to (to:), from (from:), and subject (subject:) fields. Easy enough, right? You can also search based on labels (label:), emails with attachments (has:attachment), and even dates (after:/before:yyyy/mm/dd). Search operators will come in especially handy if you need more flexi bility when setting up filters (you can add any search term to the “Has the words” field).
5. You can send attachments of these types to Gmail users without having to worry about them not being able to open your files!
Attachment Types Supported for Viewing as HTML in Gmail
