Email Management

Gmail is a Label-based system. Inbox, Trash, Drafts—are technically Labels.

Labels are a great way to organize Gmail. They are like tags you can add to emails you send or receive. The great things is that you can add more than one Label to an email. Another feature you’d love is the ability to add colors to Labels.

And here's what each one of them means:

Default: It shows the emails in the order that they came in — the layout we see every day.

Important first: Gmail uses its own prediction to determine which emails are important, and places them at the top of your inbox with a yellow marker. Everything else goes below that.

Unread first: This setting displays unread emails above recent emails. This is especially helpful if you use the read/unread as a to-do list.

Starred first: This is for the ones who use stars to prioritize their inbox. The starred messages appear first, followed by everything else.

Priority Inbox: Gmail learns what kind of emails you interact with the most, and puts them at the top of your inbox. This is great for folks who have to deal with a lot of emails every day.

Here's what you have to do:

Pay careful attention here: If you disable a tab, its messages will appear in the Primary tab. Always remove the ones which do not receive many emails. One up for Gmail organization!

Archiving does not delete your email but removes it from your inbox. They remain searchable too. Your Gmail inbox is better organized.

Select an email and look for the file-like icon at the top. Click it and you’re done.

All you have to do is start an advanced search. Click the grey arrow at the extreme right of your search bar.

And a dropdown opens up.

Type in an email address and click “Create filter with this search” at the bottom right of the popup.

For example, if you get a bunch of newsletter emails you have no interest in, you can create a filter that will automatically archive all emails that come from that address.

Ways in which you can use filters to organize Gmail: