Gmail Reveals Its Hottest Secrets (Part 2)
May 6th, 2014 by
I wrote a blog post about a week ago about several hidden, secret features in GMail. Most of that was about organizing your inbox. This post is more about the secrets and great features you can use as you are writing emails. Let me know if you have any additional helpful features in the comments below!
(numbers 1-5 in part 1 of this series)
6. Canned Responses
Do you find yourself composing the same email several times a day? If so, you should enable canned responses. Canned responses are drafts or email templates that you can save in your settings when you go to compose a new message. They will not show up automatically, so you need to go to the Labs in the settings of GMail, and enable this feature. There will be an arrow at the bottom right of a new message, and that is where you will find the feature once it has been enabled. This saves so much time for me and my colleagues, so I highly recommend it.
7. Reply from the same address the message was sent to
If you have multiple email addresses you use in your workplace, it’s important to make sure that you reply with the appropriate email. When I compose an email, I have to switch the email address of who it is coming from (which also changes my email signature). However, you can automatically set it so that when you press reply on an email thread, it replies from the email address the original email was sent to.
8. Undo Send
Have you ever forgotten to include something in an email? Attach something? Sent an email to the wrong person? Misspelled something? Addressed the wrong person? (that one’s really bad)!
THIS SETTING IS A LIFE SAVER!!
It can be enabled under the General settings. You can select how long you have to undo a message once you press the send button. I have selected up to 30 seconds, which is the longest time possible. Once you send an email, you’ll get a notification at the top of your email account saying you can undo send or see the message you just sent. Please note that this is the only place where you will be able to undo the send. If you archive the message, click to your inbox, or somewhere else within GMail, the undo send option will not be available.
9.Boomerang
Boomerang is a great tool to use for scheduling emails and following up with people. Often, I work late nights, but I don’t want to send emails that late mainly so the person who receives it won’t know I work until 9:00 at night. I can compose an email and schedule it to be sent anytime in the future. You can also set it to “boomerang” back into your inbox if someone does not reply or open the email you sent. You also have the ability to manage and edit any of your scheduled messages. Boomerang allows you to schedule or return up to 10 messages per month. If you find yourself needing it more than that, there is a subscription available for purchase.
10. Rapportive
Rapportive is a feature that shows information about your contacts right in your inbox. They “combine what you know, what your organization knows, and what the web knows,” to display this information in the right sidebar of your email. I like this because it’s an easy way to connect with those people on social media (ie: put your great stalking tendencies to work 😉
