Gmail doesn’t need any separate introduction, most of us using this lovely email service from it’s starting date. But none of us aware about the hidden features in built with Gmail service, that are become more time savers. Through this article we are going to look at the time saver tips of Gmail.
1. keyboard shortcuts
Gmail inbox is equipped with some keyboard shortcuts, some keyboard shortcuts are available in the default view, but some only work if you’ve turned them on. First we have to turn on Keyboard shortcuts (Keyboard shortcuts aren’t supported on all keyboards), for that open Gmail, in the top right corner of the inbox you can see Settings icon, click Settings . Scroll down to the “Keyboard shortcuts” section, select Keyboard shortcuts on. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.
Now you can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate your inbox and messages, format text, and complete actions like archiving and deleting. Some of the essential keyboard shortcuts are given below,
| Action | Shortcut |
| To compose new message | c |
| Compose in a new tab | d |
|
Search mail |
/ |
| Search chat contacts | g |
| Open “more actions” menu | . |
| Open “move to” menu | v |
| Open “label as” menu | l |
Now just look how it works. First go to settings and enable keyboard shortcuts, as seen on the above picture. After enabling keyboard shortcuts, just press the c button on the keyboard. You can see the compose box popup on the screen. Now press ‘d’ button, the compose box opens up in a separate new tab. ‘/’ button will guide you to the search box. You can find the ‘/’ button in number pad, hitting the button will guide the cursor to search box in the mail box, you can start search easily by typing the query it on the box. Click on ‘.’ button (again in number pad) will guide you to more action menu, and it will open up and shows “Mark all as read”. You can use other buttons in the someway. To open keyboard shortcut help, use “?”. To move to new conversation in your Gmail use ‘k’, back to older conversation use ‘j’. To jump to specific section like inbox, sent messages, draft etc. there are shortcuts for it. Go to starred conversations ‘g + s’, to go to sent messages ‘g + t’
to go to Drafts ‘g + d’, to go to your Inbox ‘g + i’. To go to Contacts ‘g + c’, to go to Tasks ‘g + k’, to go to label ‘g + l’. To Delete ‘#’, to
Reply ‘r’, to Reply all ‘a’, to
Reply all in a new window ‘Shift + a’ . To Forward ‘f’, to forward in a new window ‘Shift + f’.
There is a big list of keyboard shortcuts available you can read the complete keyboard shortcuts from here.
2. Recall Sent Emails or Undo Send in Gmail
Yes, you heard it right. You can recall your sent emails in Gmail. To enable the feature, go to settings and look for ‘Undo send:’, there you can see ‘Enable Undo Send’, check the tick mark to enable the feature. Just below you can see the cancellation period in seconds, you can increase this to maximum 30 seconds. That means your email will send only after 30 seconds. It is not actually recalling the sent mail, instead it delays the time to the email and wait for the user response. If the user noticed that that he send the email to a wrong person, he will get a chance to recall the email or Undo send the email. This is a nice feature, sometimes it will be a lifesaver if you are a person like sending your personal email carelessly to your boss ! or sending an email to your wife that is meant for your lady colleague !!
3. Precise search in Gmail
Most of us had a bad experience with a crowded inbox with tons of wanted and unwanted mails. Some of them are needed, some of them are newsletters and promotions from some companies, some have business email that you want to remember, some are some personal emails that you want to keep for further reference, all are dumbed in a box ! The difficulty arises when you want to find a particular email from the mail box, sometimes we need mails from some particular persons, sometimes wee need mail received on a particular date, sometimes from a particular email id. Finding is very difficult if you are not a power user. You can save time if you know these tips,
Specify the sender –
from:
[Usage:- from: bigboss]
Specify a recipient – to: [Usage:-to:jack]
Words in the subject line – Subject: [Usage:- subject:dinner]
Messages with a YouTube video – has:youtube [Usage:- has:youtube]
Messages with a certain label –label: [Usage:-label:friends]
Messages with an attachment – has:attachment [Usage:- has:attachment]
Attachments with a certain name or file type – filename: [Usages:- filename:pdf, filename: homework.txt]
You can see the full list of Gmail search operators you can use with Gmail from here.
