gmail

Gmail: Auto forward specific incoming emails to a different email address

December 26, 2009 2:12 am by Jal

Quick-tip

Yes, I know it’s a long title but well that’s exactly what I am going to write about. First of all, Merry Christmas to all my readers and my apologies for no new posts for 4 days. It was in these holidays that I really needed to forward some of beautiful greetings that I received from my friends to my family members. I thought there should be a way to forward specific mails to a different email address in Gmail. It didn’t took me a while to figure it out. Here’s the small trick so you don’t have to goof around:

Gmail: Auto forward specific emails to a different email address

» Login to your Gmail account and click ‘Settings’ on the top-right.

» Click ‘Filters’ tab > ‘Create a new filter’ (located bottom-center).

» Now choose the criteria for which you wish to forward an incoming mail to different email address. Here the permutations and combinations are many. Fill in your desired criteria and click ‘Next Step »’ button.

» Here, check the ‘Forward it to:’ option and click ‘Create Filter’.

There you are! Obviously this filter won’t forward older emails falling into the criteria you specified.

Merge duplicate contacts in Gmail

December 16, 2009 17:09 pm by Jal

Recently I did a post on merging/deleting duplicate contacts in Windows Live Hotmail and now I am happy that even Gmail has incorporated this feature. So without much ado, here’s how you merge duplicate contacts in Gmail.

Merging duplicate contacts in Gmail:

1) In your Gmail account, click ‘Contacts’ in the left pane.

Gmail - Contacts

2) Now in the right pane, click the button that reads ‘Find duplicates’

Gmail - Duplicate contacts

3) It will take 15 seconds max (depends on your contact list) to detect dupes. When it finishes, it’ll display the duplicate contacts with the number of times they are duplicated. You can choose not to merge some contacts by unchecking them. Finally click ‘Merge’ button on top.

Gmail - Merge duplicate contacts

Merging duplicate contacts in Gmail was something that I really wished for. It’ll be like a dream come true for those who sync Gmail contacts with their smart phones frequently.

Sync Gmail contacts with Outlook

November 7, 2009 1:09 am by Jal

I haven’t used offline mail clients to an extent that I could actually write a post about them. I never felt the need to have one because I am always connected to the internet and Gmail does the best job for me. Such was a scenario until yesterday when I had to use Outlook. While using it I felt the need to sync my Gmail contacts with Outlook and one of my friend suggested a really helpful piece of software that does this precise job – Go Contact Sync.

Go Contact Sync is a perfect synchronization tool to manage contacts between Gmail and Outlook. It’s a free, open-source tool that supports contact categories and their photos so that your address-book (contacts) look exactly the same on both. Finally I can get rid of entering the contact details again and again.

Features:

» Smooth synching of contacts between Gmail and Outlook.

» Multiple sync options, categories and contact photos are supported.

» Automatic synchronization feature.

» Choose one-way or two-way sync according to your preference.

You can also use Go Contact Sync to backup your contacts too.

Download Go Contact Sync / 1.1MB

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2 ways to manage friendly spam in Gmail

October 28, 2009 16:37 pm by Jal

Have you ever subscribed to a mailing list or commented on a website/blog and check-marked ‘Notify me of follow up comments’ and are now fed up with the thread that always shows up as ‘Unread’? It becomes more irritating when you find the updated conversation has nothing to do with you. But you still want to continue subscribing it because you hope something might just interest you in future. If you are using Gmail, there are two ways to spare yourself the annoyance.

Method #1 – Using ‘mute’ feature

If you find a mailing list conversation irrelevant, you just need to ‘mute’ it and all the future conversations will stay out of your inbox. To mute a conversation, simply select it and click ‘More actions’ > ‘Mute’.

Using 'mute' feature in Gmail

However, muted conversations are simply ‘off’ your inbox and not ‘Read’ mails. They will remain as ‘Unread’ mails and you can search for muted conversations by typing ‘is:muted‘ in the search box.

To unmute the conversation, select the muted conversation and click ‘Move to inbox’.

Method #2 – Using Filters

You can manage such friendly spam with ‘Filters’ too. This will require you to have a bit of common sense.

1) First, select the conversation and click ‘More actions’ > ‘Filter messages like these’.

2) The ‘Filter options’ panel will be displayed on top. By default, the email address of the sender is already entered in the ‘From’ field. You can tweak the filter by using a ‘unique’ word from the subject line of the conversation and entering it into the ‘Subject’ field. Click ‘Next step»’ button.

Manage friendly spam in Gmail using filters

3) Now, checkmark ‘Mark as read’ and ‘Also apply filter to xx conversations below’ options and click ‘Create filter’.

Manage friendly spam in Gmail using filters

Once you make a filter, all the future additions to the conversations won’t light up as ‘Unread’ mail. It will still remain in your inbox but will less annoy you.

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Technorati Tags: manage spam in gmail,friendly spam in gmail,using filters to manage spam,mute feature in gmail,muting conversations in gmail

4 new themes for Gmail

September 4, 2009 12:29 pm by Jal

We all know that some months ago Google introduced cool themes to Gmail and changed its rather skeleton look n’ feel. This was a wise step as that made me (and many more others for sure) switch to Gmail. Now Google adds more themes to Gmail. It’s always refreshing to see the changing eye candy. Well, Google introduced 4 new themes for Gmail today which are ready to use. The names of these themes are ‘Turf’, ‘Orcas Islands’, ‘High Score’ and one more unnamed theme labelled ‘Random’.

You can set themes by navigating to ‘Settings’ >> ‘Themes’ from your Gmail inbox. The Random theme is not actually a theme but once you select it, Gmail will set a random theme from the available themes every time you log in. Go ahead, check ‘em yourself.

Technorati Tags: gmail themes

Import Yahoo! contacts to G-Mail

October 24, 2008 16:18 pm by Jal

G-mail has been increasingly lovable in the past some months. Many have migrated from their years old Yahoo, Hotmail, etc accounts to G-mail because it is sleek, has lots of features and a little chemical-X too! So let’s say you have created your own G-mail account but all your contacts are still lying there in your old Yahoo account. And you are not that jobless to sit back and copy all the contacts manually from Yahoo to G-mail. Many of you must be knowing the easier way but here it is for the newbies.

1) Open up your Yahoo! account and click on the ‘Contacts’ tab.

2) Move your eyes far to the right and you will see the ‘Import/Export’ link. Click it.

3) In the ‘Export’ section, click ‘Yahoo CSV: Export Now’ button.

4) A ‘Save File…’ dialog box will appear. Save the file on your desktop.

5) Now open up your G-mail account. Click the ‘Contacts’ link on the left pane.

6) Click the ‘Import’ link far to the right.

7) Now you will see the familiar ‘Browse’ button. Click it and browse to the file you just saved. Then click ‘Import’ button below. Done! All your Yahoo Contacts will be in your G-mail account.