From the response about last week’s new, “Scheduled Send” feature in Gmail, I found that many of you are interested in more things in Gmail. By “things”, the word some of you put in your emails I see that you want to find out about features in Gmail you may not have heard of before that may be beneficial. So, let’s take a look at a few today.
Before I get started, I wanted to address a question about last week’s article. Someone asked if I had written about a Google Chrome add-in that did the same thing and more a while back. Yes, I did. It is called Streak (caps count with this link: bit.ly/2YDShLq). It is a good add-in that does one additional thing for me that I like and Gmail does not do. That is to show me when someone has read an email that I sent. However, in my opinion, having many add-ins with Chrome will sometimes slow it down a bit. So, if I have something built-in to Gmail , which I now do, I will get rid of the additional add-in. So I did even though it does not inform me of read emails.
OK, so next up. Have you ever sent an email and immediately thought, “Oh no, I meant to add one more thought or sentence to that?” “I wish I could get it back and finish it!” Gmail gives you that ability…if you act quickly. You can use Undo Send. If this is not enabled you can easily add it. Click on the “Gear” icon at the top right corner of your Gmail screen. Choose the “Settings” link. Look for "Undo Send" From the dropdown menu choose either 5, 10, 20 or 30 seconds. I use the 30-second option. After you select an option, scroll down to the bottom and click, “Save Changes” and you are done. When you send an email after that, look at the lower left corner of your Gmail window. You will see, “Message Sent”, “Undo” and “View Message” for the length of time you have set as the “wait time.” If you click “Undo” it will stop sending the message and open it back up for you to edit, delete or send later. If you click “View Message” it will automatically send it immediately and open it up so you can view the sent message.
The following is a good Google trick which can be used for different reasons. If you have an email address like ron@gmail.com you can place a plus symbol (+) between your Gmail username, add most any characters you want and then add “@gmail.com”. This creates a Gmail “alias.” So, for the above example, which is not my real Gmail address, I could create the alias ron+buy@gmail.com. It can be used by me for anything I purchase. Then when companies or people reply to it I will know what it deals with. It will arrive in my regular inbox. Gmail ignores everything after the + and before the @ as far as delivery so the address will still work.
Why would I want to create an alias? So that I can create a filter in Gmail that would move anything from that “buy” alias to a “Purchases” folder for items I have purchased. Think of the possibilities. You could set up different aliases for people, websites, news, a group of people, etc. It is possible to create one for every company you communicate with and then if an email comes from somewhere other than that company you would know they gave away or sold that email address. For instance, if you set up, ron+fun@gmail.com and you got an email from the “XYZ Company” to that email address you would know who originally had it and gave it to someone else.
