There's no doubt Gmail is one of the best webmail services currently available. But it could do better. Here are a few tips to help you organise, optimise, and take control of your Gmail account so you'll spend less time sorting through your email messages.
Optional dots
I'll let you in on a little secret. You know those little dots in your Gmail address - like the one in 'john.doe@gmail.com'? Gmail doesn't recognise them as part of your email address. That's right, john.doe@gmail.com will receive all mail that's sent to johndoe@gmail.com, joh.n.doe@gmail.com, and even john...........doe@gmail.com or j.o.h.n.d.o.e@gmail.com. It's an interesting quirk of Gmail, and one that you can use to your advantage.
Suppose that you want an easy way to separate business email from personal email, without having to individually label each message. Simply give your business clients the e-mail address 'john.doe@gmail.com', and give friends and family 'johndoe@gmail.com'. Messages sent to either address will come to your inbox, and you can set up a filter that automatically labels messages sent to 'john.doe@gmail.com' as 'business.'
See also: How to email and browse the web offline
Comments
Clive Belend said: You could use dots to weed out spammers too Every time you purchase something add an extra dot and keep a record of the email you used If you get spam sent to clivebelend you know that third site you used has sold on your email
Greg said: I have enough trouble convincing people capitalisation doesnt matter on email addresses let alone having dots in there too
Dipso said: Interesting article especially the little secret about the dots Could be very handy that