Though most know about Gmail‘s key features including its 7+ GB of storage space, powerful spam filters and threaded conversations, the power of Gmail as an email client goes well beyond those, bullet point features.
Through a combination of less-used tools, a labs system that is constantly introducing new, experimental features and other hidden tricks in the Gmail system, Gmail is more than the most compelling webmail service, but is also possibly the most useful email client available of any kind.That being said, some of the best features either are hidden away under layers or aren’t turned on by default, making Gmail some of its hidden options well worth exploring.
If you’re looking to get the most out of your Gmail experience, here are five of the most important and useful Gmail features you might have missed or could be underusing.
Priority Inbox
Introduced just last year, Priority Inbox has done more to separate Gmail as an email client than almost any other feature on the list and is a virtual must-have for anyone who gets more than a few dozen emails per day.
Odds are, if you’re like most people, you get a variety of email in your inbox ranging from important letters from your friends and coworkers to newsletters and announcements. Some of the emails you need and want to read immediately, others can wait.
What Priority Inbox does is sort your email into what’s important and what isn’t, putting the important stuff on top in a separate list. This feature does require some training and, for the first week or so will make some bad guesses, but once it learns it becomes completely natural.
If you haven’t enabled Priority Inbox, you do so in your settings. You can also customize it to change the types information it displays.
Infinite Email Addresses
Your Gmail account doesn’t just come with one email address assigned to it, but with a literally infinite number of potential addresses that you can use.
By simply adding a + after your username (IE: username+something@gmail.com) you can create iterations of your email address you can give out for various purposes. For example, if you sign up for an email newsletter, you can use username+newsletter@gmail.com and that will let you create filters based on that incoming email address. Best of all, should that address get leaked to spammers, you can simply block all mail coming to it without sacrificing your whole account.
It’s a simple trick that can save you a lot of time and headache. However, some newsletters and sites have grown wise to it and don’t allow users to sign up with email addresses that have a “+” in them. Still, it will likely work on many of the sites you do need to register on.
Undo Send
Gmail, like most webmail services, has a strange quirk where sent mail is not immediately pushed out. Since all of the accounts share a single outgoing server, it is instead queued to go out and there is a delay of a few moments, barely noticeable but also very useful.
By enabling Undo Send in your Gmail Labs, you can take advantage of this feature and never accidentally send an email again. Once an email is sent, you’ll have about 45 seconds to cancel it. Not enough to stop a bad email if you realize the mistake an hour later, but more than enough to catch an accidental press of the “Send” button or if you realize you made another mistake.
In short, you can stop a large percentage of your email mistakes by setting up this feature and having a quick trigger finger.
Canned Responses
Another labs feature, Canned Responses is a powerful tool for anyone who sends out the same or very similar email repeatedly.
Basically, Canned Responses lets you create templates for your email and then either reply or start a new message with that template. This is great for sending out forms, stock responses on any other correspondence that is largely the same from conversation to conversation.
Gmail Interface, Your Email Address
Finally, Gmail has the ability to send and receive email at any account that you have. So long as you have POP3 access to the account, Gmail can both send and receive email at that address.
There are actually several ways to do this. The simplest is to have Gmail check your account and then send mail as it, which it can even do using your existing SMTP server. You can also have your existing account forward a copy of your email to Gmail, which requires only moments to set up at your existing account.
However, if you want to completely eliminate the middle man and simply have Google host your email, you can set up a free Google Apps account for your domain and use Gmail as if it were your local email server, complete with IMAP and POP3 access to your mail.
No matter which solution you choose, this lets you have Gmail’s interface, spam filtering and ease of access at any email address you choose.
All in all, as compelling as these features are, the best thing about Gmail is that it is constantly improving. Not only is Google adding regular updates to Gmail itself, but the Labs system and the addition of Gadgets means that there’s constantly new tools and features to be found.
Your Gmail experience can be almost completely customized to make it the most powerful and useful system for your needs, something no other webmail client can say, especially for free.
Also read: Google -The Powerhouse
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