{Interactive Web Design Blog}

Hello hello!

I hope you all enjoyed the first part of this post: New To Gmail Tutorial.
Today, we’ll go over adding filters to your inbox so you can immediately
organize emails as they come in.  We will also look at applying labels to your emails.

How to add a Filter to your email:

Start by clicking on the “Settings” link in the top right corner of the page.
Next, select the “Filters” link from the settings page.

You should see this page:

Choose the “Create a new filter” and you should see the screen below:

This is the part of creating a filter that is not so friendly and useable.  You would think when you go to type in an email address, gmail would pop up their helper that shows your contacts… but it doesn’t. So be WARNED, have your email addresses ready and accessible before you try to create this filter.

I’ve inserted an example below to illustrate what text fields I generally fill out.

You can go as general or specific as you want with Gmail filters.  Beauty!
When you are finished, click on “Next step” to continue on.

The next window will be the Actions window.  This is where you specify what you want to happen after Gmail filters the emails.  Do you want them starred for emphasis, archived for later, or (my personal favorite) do you want Gmail to add a Label to them.

Select the actions that you want to apply to your filter.  If you haven’t made any labels yet, you can create a new label right in the drop down box.

Gmail also give you the option to apply this filter to any current emails that meet the requirements. You can find this option to the right of the “Create Filter” button.

When you have selected all of your desire actions, click the “Create Filter” button.

Gmail will then show you the filter that you’ve just created.. and you are good to go my friends!!

Now that you have created your filter… lets look s a bit more at Labels.

Gmail keeps your labels in the left column on your page.

If you want to label something on the fly, Gmail also has a new feature that allows you to click and drag the label onto any email you want.  Give it a try.  click on the “personal” label and drag it over to a email of your choose. quick and easy!

If you click on a label… A little window will pop up where you can choose the colors of your label.  (If there aren’t enough colors for you, there is a Lab for custom colors)

Here’s a screen shot of a “Personal” label attached to one of my emails.

So there you have it!

With these tools, you can customize your email as little or as much as you want.
I hope this post has helped you organize your life even more.

If you really enjoyed this post, or think there is something I haven’t covered, please let me know by commenting below.

much <3

Laura

Check out my program! Interactive Design Lab

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