I’ve written two other posts with Gmail tips and tricks already (you can view them here and here, but Gmail is such a powerful tool, I’m always learning something new I can do with it. Both of these tips I’m about to share with you guys today have been game changers for me, so I thought blogging them so you can all benefit was a great idea!

Undo send
Have you ever accidentally hit SEND on an email that you weren’t quite done with and then had a mini panic attack? I know I can’t be the only one! Gmail actually has a really handy feature that will eliminate that entirely!! Under the general settings tab, you can set your account to allow you to cancel an outgoing email for up to 30 seconds. It basically gives you that amount of time to decide if the email should be cancelled or not.

Filtering out all your “junk” mail
If you’re like me, you use your one main email anytime you need to sign up for a newsletter or pay for something online. I do it that way mostly for convenience. I don’t have time to check or search through multiple inboxes, so I prefer everything to go into one. The thing that sucks though, is having all of those West Elm, Urban Outfitters, etc emails cluttering your inbox. You can get around that though by utilizing the filters option in Gmail! Basically, you’ll set up your filter to automatically archive (or move to another folder, or whatever else you might want to do) any messages including certain words that mass emails usually contain. I have mine set up to move them into a “junk” folder. I didn’t archive them or delete them because sometimes I really do want to get a code for 50% off and free shipping at Old Navy and I wanted to be able to access them all easily!

One other note on this: You want to set up your filter to make sure it excludes any specific terms that apply to emails you really do want in your main inbox. For example, I want to make sure I get emails when my clients inquire through my website so I’ve set my filter to exclude emails that include “Showit” in the text of the message. I also excluded anything with “shipping” or “confirmation” so I can be sure that I get invoices and shipping info from any online purchases I make.

Both of these changes can be made by accessing their respective tabs (general and filters) from the settings menu! They’re easy as pie to set up, but if you have questions, feel free to shoot me an email, or leave a comment!

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