Email Overload? Use These Proven Gmail Tips to Save Time!

Is email dragging you down? Then these Gmail tips and tricks are for you! From inbox filters and labels to recurring emails and auto-archive, these Gmail hacks will make managing your inbox so much easier. In this video, Scott Friesen shares 7 great Gmail tips that will save you time in no time!

Learn more about creating recurring emails with Right Inbox

Transcript:
​Let's be honest. Sometimes our email can get out of control and you may seem like you have a never ending list of new messages. Well, I've got good news for you, because in this video I'm going to share with you seven tips to help you clean up your inbox and also help you to save time right here within Gmail. Hello everyone! Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And let's don't waste any time and get right into tip number one. And that has to do with saving time when you are replying to a message. So I'm going to take this message just as an example here. I know it's a notification but this could really be any other message. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to reply to this message. I'm just going to say, this is a send test for example and then down below, I've got my standard Send button nothing out of the ordinary here. This is the default Send button. So I'm going to hit Send, and it's going to, well it's going to keep me right here within this message. And it's going to keep this message right here within my inbox, because all I did was send it. But if you'd like to keep a cleaner and much easier to manage inbox, there's a little setting I want you to know about. If we come up here and select the gear icon and then select see all settings, right here within the first tab, the general tab we want to come down here to Send and Archive. Now, by default when you first sign up and start using your Gmail account, it is probably set to hide the Send and Archive button. That's exactly what we just saw a moments ago. I'm going to encourage you to select Show, Send and Archive button so that when you hit send when you're replying to a message, it will immediately archive that message and remove it from your inbox. Not remove it for good, not send it to the Bin or send it to Junk mail. It's going to send it to your all mail accounts so that you can always search for it. You can always go back and retrieve it. Now don't forget when you make this selection or any selection here within Gmail settings we want to scroll all the way down to the bottom and select save changes. So now we're brought back to our inbox and let's just grab another email as a test. So now when I come down and select the Reply button I can add in my details here but now you will see the blue button says send plus archive. This time as soon as I send this message it's going to remove it from my inbox. And it's going to return me to my inbox which also may makes things a lot faster as well. Now, the next tip on our list is not only going to save you time but it's going to save you a whole lot of effort. Why? Because we're going to write one single email and be able to repurpose it multiple times. And know we're not talking about using Gmail templates or using a TextExpander. We're talking about situations where you need to send out the same email, perhaps to the exact same audience on a regular basis. In my example here, I want to send out a weekly report reminder because maybe there's a member of my team or maybe there's an entire group where I want to remind them to please send me their weekly report. Now I certainly do not want to do this every Friday morning. Chances are I'm going to forget about it. And it really is just a waste of my time. Now the bad news is that Gmail actually can't do recurring emails like this without the help of an extension but that's where the good news comes in because we're using the right inbox extension in order to do this and so much more. So let me expand this message for just a moment. Right after that you can see there is a lot of a additional features which write inbox adds to our Gmail account. But the one that we want to focus on here is this recurring button. So I've added my sendees I've added the subject and the contents of this email. And now I want to set it up that this will go out every Friday morning. So all I need to do is select this recurring box and yes I want it to happen weekly. Yes, I want it to happen every week. Now we've got a lot of varieties here depending on your needs, depending on the type of message that you're sending. Now, in my case I'm going to deselect these other days of the week. I want it to go out at Friday and maybe I want to send it fairly early in the morning so that they're thinking about it. So I'm you to say, let's do 7:00 AM. Next you can click on the time zone just to make sure that right inbox has selected and is using the correct time zone. Now we can say when the next start date is, now for me it's going to put the initial date or today's date in the start date. Now that makes perfect sense because the next occurrence it tells me will be this Friday. Perfect, I wanted to start happening this Friday. And I can either set this to never end, or I can choose after a number of occurrences or on a specific date. Don't worry, you can always come back in here and edit this later but for right now, I'm going to hit schedule. What this will do is it will this message away. It says if the message has been sent, but really what has happened is that it's included within my draft folder. So if I come into my drafts here at the very top, you can see the weekly report reminder. Now this is very important because if you ever need to come back and edit this recurring email, this is precisely where you will need to do it. We can just open up this particular meeting and then select the recurring button again. And all of our settings are going to be saved of course, so we can choose a different end date or we can choose a different schedule, or we can just cancel the recurring email altogether. But now I will never have to write this particular email again. Maybe there's something I want to do quarterly or monthly or by weekly I can do it one time. And with the right inbox extension, I can set it up to go out when I need it to. If you want to learn more and start using right inbox for yourself, be sure to click the link in the description below. Now another great way to save time and a lot of hassle right here within Gmail, is by filtering out specific messages or specific senders based on their content. A good example of this may be the many newsletters in which you are subscribed to, and they can take up an awful lot of room right here within your inbox. Well, there is an easier and simpler way. Most newsletters you don't need to see immediately. And in fact, you could have them go somewhere else other than your inbox so that you can go and review them when you want to, you may notice over here on the left hand side, I already have a newsletters label but maybe there's some that haven't fit in to that filter just yet. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to click on one of those messages and let's say that I want these calendar notification to go somewhere else so that they don't take up so much space. And so much of my attention right here in the inbox. Now we could copy and paste this and put this in the search bar up here and create our filter that way. But it's often easier to come all the way over to the right click on the more dots and select filter message like this, because it's automatically going to bring over that information, the from address and in the background you can see, yeah there's an awful lot of these messages in my inbox. So let's get them out of here. Now you can go through and review the other criteria if you're looking for additional keyword that are combined with this sender. But in this case what I'm going to do, is I'm going to select create filter. And on the following screen, we have some other options that you're going to want to go through one by one, especially if you don't have much experience with this filter function. Now, the good news is, is I have an entire other video showing you everything you need to know about Gmail filters and labels. And if you'd like to learn more, be sure to click the link in the upper right hand corner of your screen. But in this case, the main thing that I want to do is number one, I want to skip the inbox in brackets, archive it, right? I don't want it to arrive here in my main inbox. And then second of all, I want to apply a particular label. Now, in this case, I've already created this label, right? I have a label called Newsletters. This is exactly where I want it to go. So with these two check boxes selected, I could go ahead and select create filter. But what I could also do is say also apply filter to matching conversations. So if it finds other things in my inbox, it can apply this right away as well. So I'm going to say create filter. And now if we go back to our inbox, we can see that this number has been significantly reduced. We don't have any of those calendar notifications in our inbox. And look at this Newsletters 396. I believe that was at 40 before. This may be a bit of an extreme example but hopefully now you have a better understanding of how you can create your own rules and filters that things that you don't need to see right away, don't have to start their life right here within the inbox. Now, another great way to use Gmail filters and labels is to identify messages where you are carbon copied or CC. In most instances when you are CC on a message it means that it's not urgent and you've been added just for visibility reasons. And therefore you might not want to or need to have those messages appear right here in your inbox or even if you do want them to appear in your main inbox. Maybe you'd like to add a special label just to identify those types of messages. So in order to set up this type of filter, we want to click on the filter option here. And yes, we're starting with a blank slate. Now you may think that you should come down to the two field because this is where, well this is where you send the email address or where it's going to be looking for those email addresses. But what you actually want to do is come down to the has the words and here we want to type in CC colon and then your email address. So in this case, I'm going to put in my test address for this particular account and then we are going to hit create filter. Now you can see on the screen behind me it has identified and picked up several messages where I have been CC. Next up we want to make the same or similar decisions that we did last time and decide do we want it to skip the inbox? Do we want to add a particular label? Do we want to send it somewhere else or send an automatic reply? We have all of these choices available to us. I'll let you decide which is going to be most relevant for you. Next, let's take a look at how we can get better use out of our labels here on the left hand side of the screen. Now I know for many of you, labels are a crucial part of your inbox strategy, and you probably have a lot more than just the six that I have here in my demonstration account, but let's take a look at a few tips which are going to help you make better use of this area. Now right off the that you can see that there's a difference between my bolded labels and those that are in a regular font. And the difference is that I have unread messages within these labels. So that can certainly be helpful letting me know which ones have things that I haven't laid eyes on just yet. However, what about these three that I've read everything in them? What if I could automatically hide some of these labels where I have read all of the messages? Well, all you need to do is come over here to the more buttons and then come down to the in label list. And here I can choose show if unread. So I'm going to select that for my complete label. And it's gone. Let's come down to my urgent one as well. I'm going to select show if unread. So now only messages that have that label will be applied. Let me go up here. And I'm just going to take this email as an example. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to come down and add the urgent label and I'm going to hit apply. And look at now, urgent is back in the mix. It's back here at the top of my label list. I can go click on it and deal with that particular message. The other thing that you may want to pay attention to is that there may be some labels, even if there are unread messages that you want to hide altogether. So once again, in label list category, we can come down here and select Hide. So maybe you only want to annually come back here and check on your own accord. You can choose that option as well. Now, another great way to make use of your Gmail labels, is to make them a little more action oriented. So that rather than just having different categories, names of your clients or dates or projects, you actually give a action tense. Here at the very top of my labels, you can see I have three that are listed as action required in green, completed, which is in red and waiting for response, which is in yellow. Now the great thing about these labels of course is I can add them on top of other labels as well, but this can really help me determine which messages should I be dealing with at any given time. So for example I'm just going to select a few of these messages and I'm going to add the action completed label. I'm going to say apply there. And maybe there's a few others here, maybe this one and this one, I'm going to say, I'm waiting for a response so I'm going to apply that label. Now I can quickly and easily filter out these messages. So if I only have a few minutes, maybe these were longer messages that require me to go and find an attachment, or I need to do some research first, all I have to do is select on action required. And now I'm just dealing with those particular messages. And maybe if I send a message to someone and I'm waiting for them to reply, that's where I'll want to put this waiting for response label. Now you can see in order to bring them to the very top of your label order, you'll need to either add a number or in my case a special character such as an asterisk so that they stay at the very top of your list. Next, let's take a look at two very easy ways in which we can turn any email into a Google calendar of event. So instead of me taking a look at the details of this email and then opening up Google Calendar in a separate tab I can come up here to the top and select the more option and then select create event. Now this is going to launch Google Calendar in a separate tab, but it will be bringing in some of the most important information. But I think an even easier way to do so is to make use of the Google side panel. So here at the very top, we can expand and take a look at our calendar. So I can browse through my schedule for the week and say, you know what? I'd like to meet on Friday. Here all I have to do is select the time. So maybe I want to meet at 9:00 AM. I'm got to click on that. And immediately that time is already brought in with this particular calendar event. So I can quickly and easily save this information. Of course I can add my own description. I can add further guests and other details and then hit save for this particular meeting. Now, if you've made it all the way to the end of video, I'd like you to prove it by adding the phrase, "Gmail email" in the comments down below, and while you're there why don't you tell me which was your favorite tip in today's video or what is some other feature or functionality you'd like me to address in a future video? And if you enjoy today's content, you'll probably enjoy the other video right here on the Simpletivity Channel. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact it's very simple.