How to Manage Your Email Using Google Mail

Where did you put that email that your boss sent you 6 months ago? Finding an old email can be a pain.

This article explains how to use Google Mail to manage your email. I use these steps in work daily.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Categorize your email using tags. For example, you receive an email from an online newspaper that you subscribe to. It contains links to stories about the war in Iraq, the economy, and healthcare. Create a tag named “Iraq”, one named “economy“, one named “healthcare“, and one with the “name of the newspaper“. This stores a link to your email in folders with the same names as the previously mentioned tags. When you search your email with the word “Iraq”, every email with that tag appears. Look in the folder named “healthcare” and every email with that tag is displayed. You can create as many tags as you want for an email. This creates an easy way to find email.

2. Perform the following steps to create a tag.
   1. Select the emails to categorize.
   2. Click on the “More actions” drop-down menu.
   3. Select “New Label”.
   4. Enter the name of the label.
   5. Click on the OK button.

3. Perform the following steps to tag an email (with a tag that already exists).
   1. Select the email to categorize.
   2. Click on the “More actions” drop-down menu.
   3. Select the appropriate tag.

4. Archive your mail. Once you tag your email, use the “Archive” feature to move the email out of your inbox. This feature just removes the email from your inbox. It does not delete the email.
   
   Perform the following steps to archive email messages.
   1. Select the emails you want to archive.
   2. Click on the “Archive” button.

5. Use the “Star” feature to easily access email that you may need to reference over a period of time. This feature acts similar to a to do list.
   
   Perform the following steps to star email messages.
   1. Select the email you want to star.
   2. Click on the “Star” button or select “Add Star“ from the “More actions” drop-down menu.
   
   You can view starred email in the “Starred” folder. Archive the email to remove it from your inbox.
   
   You can tag starred email. I star email that I need to reference during the week. These emails reside in the “Star” folder. This folder acts as a to do list for me since many of my tasks are assigned by email.