A Gmail Filter to Find your Most Important Emails

Your Gmail Inbox is overflowing with email messages. Some are newsletters that you are subscribed to, some are messages from friends and colleagues that you would like to read as soon as they arrive while the rest could be spam that managed to trick the built-in Gmail filters.

Focus on the Most Important Emails First!

When you only have a limited amount of time to process that long queue of unread messages, it is important that you prioritize your emails and defer reading stuff that is not very important and can wait (like those newsletters).

Here are two simple Gmail filters that will automatically move out all the low-priority emails out of your Inbox so that you can focus on the important ones. They should also come handy when you are checking emails on the go – the high-priority items will be delivered to your mobile device while everything else will stay in your Gmail account for you to follow up later.

1. Filter out emails that are not addressed to you

If your name is not in the TO: or CC: field of an email message, chances are that you may not have to worry too much about responding to that message.

The following filter will automatically move messages out of your Inbox to another folder that are of less-priority as they are not addressed to your directly.

• From: – you@email.com
• To: – you@email.com
• Has the words: cc: – you@email.com
• Skip the Inbox (Archive It)
• Apply the label: Not for me

If you have more than one active email address, you can either add them all to the above filter separated by the OR operator or setup another similar filter per address.

2. Move Bulk Emails to another folder

Bulk email messages are likely to contain words like “click here” or “unsubscribe” even if those hyperlinks are just a tactic of the spammer to confirm your email address. In either case, the existence of such words in the message can help us easily filter out bulk emails:

• Has the words: unsubscribe OR “click here”
• Skip the Inbox (Archive It)
• Apply the label: Bulk Mail

Not everything under the “bulk mail” folder will be spam as it will also match email newsletters that you are subscribed to. That said, email newsletters never require immediate attention so they safely reside in a folder other than your inbox.

How to Use the Mailto Syntax – Examples

The mailto protocol lets you create hyperlinks that will directly launch the default email software and compose a new email message. Mailto commands in Firefox and Chrome even work with web mail programs like Gmail.

You probably know how to use the mailto command for quickly linking to one email address but the mailto syntax actually allows a lot more – you can address the same message to multiple addresses, populate the cc, bcc or subject fields, and even write text inside the email body.

Remember to use %20 for the space character and %0A to add a line break in the body text. You can also test any mailto command by directly typing the command in your browser’s address bar.

Master the mailto Syntax

Let’s assume you maintain the official Whitehouse website and need to create mailto links that will make it easy for visitors to reach the president via email.

1. Send an email to Barack Obama (single recipient)

<a href=“mailto:obama@whitehouse.gov”>

1. Send an email to Barack and Michelle Obama (separate multiple recipients with a comma)

<a href=“mailto:obama@whitehouse.gov,michelle@whitehouse.gov”>

1. Send an email to Barack but put Michelle in the CC: list and Joe Biden in the BCC: list

<a href=“mailto:obama@whitehouse.gov?cc=michelle@whitehouse.gov&bcc=joe@whitehouse.gov”>

1. Send an email to Barack Obama with the subject “Congrats Obama”

<a href=”mailto:obama@whitehouse.gov?subject=Congrats%20Obama”>

1. Send an email to Barack Obama with the subject “Congrats Obama” and some text in the body of the email message

<a href=”mailto:obama@whitehouse.gov?subject=Congrats%20Obama&body=Enjoy%20your%20stay%0ARegards%20″>

You may use any permutations and combinations while writing a mailto hyperlink but make sure that there’s only one “?” character.

Open Email Links on Web Pages with Gmail or Yahoo Mail

There’s a new very useful feature in Firefox 3.0.3 that enables you to open mailto: links on web pages in the email program of your choice.

For instance, you may open email links directly inside Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or you could configure mailto link with desktop based email clients like Outlook, Windows Live Mail or Thunderbird.

To access this option, go to the "Tools" menu, click "Options", select the "Applications" tab and then search for "mailto" in the Content Type column.

Now when you click an email link on a web page, it will directly open a "Compose New Mail" window of Gmail or Yahoo! irrespective of what your default email client is.

Note that this could be done earlier as well, either via Google Talk , or the Google Toolbar, or the Better Gmail extension but this is a much simple approach. Thanks Blogoscoped.

All Gmail Users Have Two Email Addresses

You probably know that you can easily create multiple email aliases in Gmail by adding the plus symbol or dots to your Gmail username but here’s something even more interesting.

When you create a Gmail account, you actually get two email addresses – one is the regular @gmail.com address while the second email address has @googlemail.com in the domain.

That means if your email address in Gmail is something like billgates@gmail.com, all email messages that are sent to billgates@googlemail.com will also be delivered to your own Gmail account. That’s two for the price of one.

Like the Gmail plus trick, you can take advantage of these two domains so that less spam reaches your Gmail mailbox. For instance, Give the @googlemail.com address to your close contacts (put that in the visiting card) while keep the @gmail.com address for public (put it on your blog). Then set a Gmail filter such that all email messages with @googlemail.com in the header go a special folder so you will never miss important email from close friends.

And if you multiple Twitter accounts, associate one with your main @gmail.com address and the other with your new @googlemail.com address.