Email Tips and Tricks using Google GMail

Google’s GMail is one of the dominant free email providers on the internet along with Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo! Email. However, GMail is more popular in the scientific and the current student community which grew up with computers and technology.

If you don’t have a GMail account, I would highly recommend that you open one right now. You can use all your fancy nicknames with Hotmail and Yahoo but I would recommend a firstnamelastname@gmail.com email. I mean when you graduate and sending out resumes to potential employers, you want your email to be alexsmith@gmail.com and not koolkat2288@yahoo.com.

For those who already have a GMail account, here is an awesome GMail Email Productivity tip that will make your day.

Say your Google GMail address is alexsmith@gmail.com, you can use any of the email addresses listed below which will still send email to alexsmith@gmail.com.

AlexSmith@gmail.com
A.lexSmith@gmail.com
Al.exsmith@gmail.com
…
…
Alex.Smith@gmail.com
alexsmit.h@gmail.com
a.l.e.x.s.m.i.t.h@gmail.com
…
…
alexsmith+askstudent@gmail.com
alexsmith+cmu@gmail.com
alex.smith+gamegroup@gmail.com
alexsmith+anythingyouwant@gmail.com

If you notice from above, you can put any number of dots in your email address and it would still go to your primary GMail account. Also, if you add text after your GMail user id with a ‘+” such as alexsmith+cmu@gmail.com, it will still be forwarded to alexsmith@gmail.com.

So, how is this useful.

1. Use this to tag and filter your emails.

I am subscribed to a mailing list from my school. So, for my email, I use alexsmith+cmu@gmail.com. I then filter and tag my email coming to this email address. Similarly, you can use different variations of your Gmail and then filter your email based on the ’sent to’ address. Say alex.smith@gmail.com for companies I apply to for jobs and alexsmith@gmail.com to my buddies and family. You get the picture.

2. Email Security

Have you wondered which of those sites you might have subscribed to are selling your email address, filling up your Inbox with Spam. Well, now you can use the append feature to track your subscriptions. Say you are getting Spam being sent to alexsmith+shadysite@gmail.com, you know which site is selling out your email address. You can also use this to block a subscription or a mailing list.

3. One Time Email address

If you need to create an email id to subscribe to something or need a valid email for confirmation of a service, you can also use the append feature to create a one time email id. Say alexsmith+blah@gmail.com. After, you confirm your email, you can filter out alexsmith+blah@gmail.com to go to trash from then onwards.

Note: For those who have an existing email id that is say Alex.Smith@gmail.com, an email to alexsmith@gmail.com would still come to alex.smith@gmail.com.

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