Most of us are familiar with Gmail; given the massive popularity, it has worldwide. On average, we receive 124 emails every day, and most of us use Gmail to check on them. But not many of us are familiar with all the advanced functionalities that the platform has to offer. This article will look into the top 8 features that Gmail offers that everyone should know.
Finding location from email
There are times when you receive emails that look fishy, and you would want to know the exact location it was sent from. In Gmail, you have a feature that enables you to find the sender’s IP address. You can then do a quick google search and find an approximate location of the sender. This can be particularly useful if you receive emails from a company claiming from a particular country; you can now check their claims like a pro.
To enable this feature, open an email, press on the three dots on the side of the email, and choose show original.
You will find a bunch of text, copy them and head over to google header analyzer, a tool from google to read email header. Paste the code you copied earlier, and you will get a bunch of IP addresses.
The first one is from the original sender, copy the address and use any IP address finder tool to find the sender’s location.
Schedule an email to send later
There are instances when we want to send an email at a specific time. For example, you want to show your boss how active you have been working from home by emailing him in the middle of the night. Yes, you can do that easily with the built-in email scheduler inside Gmail. Simply type your email, press the small arrow beside the send button, and select the sent schedule. From here, you can select the time and date on when you want to send the email.
Un-send an email
Most of us are aware of this feature but not to the extent it can be used. After you press the send button, you are prompted with an undo button which you can press to un-send an email. But the duration of this button is just 5 seconds which might not be enough if you have a habit of making silly mistakes. You can extend the time up to 30 seconds to help you a bit. To enable this feature, head over to setting – General, then toggle on “undo send.” You can decide how long you want to set before calling your email back; we recommend a middle ground of 10 seconds to be a perfect balance.
Self-destruct email
Sending confidential emails is always a bit risky and, at times, nerve-racking. But did you know that, like Snapchat, Gmail too has a self-destruct feature where the email will automatically be deleted from the recipient’s inbox? Furthermore, the email cannot also be forwarded, copied, pasted, downloaded, or printed, thus ensuring a level of security.
You can also password protect the email so that the person receiving must have the credentials before opening the mail.
To enable this feature, press on the confidential toggle mode at the bottom of your email.
Use multiple stars to help organize your emails.
Most of us are familiar with the star icon, which you can press to help differentiate an important email from less important ones. You can then easily look up the star emails from the starred tab found on the left of your dashboard. But did you know you can add different types of stars and even other icons to help you find emails faster?
Head over to set all settings, and you can choose either 1 star, 4 stars, or even all the stars available for you. Now you can have multiple colored starts or icons, which will definitely help you stay organized.
Vacation responder
If you are planning to take a vacation, you can set up a vacation responder, so it automatically sends an email to anyone trying to get a hold of you. You can set the start and end date and type in the message you want to send.
Reduce space usage
For every free google account, you get a total of 15Gb of free storage shared between multiple platforms like drive, gmails, and Google photos. So it is important to save space on your Gmail, and an effective way to do that is to filter out emails with a larger size. You can enable this feature using the advanced search found right beside the search bar at the top.
Another good practice, while we are on the topic of reducing space, is to send direct-drive links rather than attaching files to each email. This way, you can be saved from multiple duplications of the same file, both for you and your recipient.
Tag people in emails
Just like you tag your friend on social media, you can do pretty much the same on Gmail as well. Simply press the @ [contact name], and they will be looped in the conversation.
