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I’ve been using Gmail for some time now and I have to say, I love it! There’s so many options for personalising it and the list of features you can use with it is really impressive.

One of the best features that I use is the filter creation tool. Creating filters not only allows you to keep your inbox tidy, which is important if you receive a lot of emails every day, but it also means that you can completely block spam BEFORE it even reaches your inbox!

Here’s how.

1. First, open an email in Gmail that you want to filter. Now click on the link at the top right of the email that says “Show Details”.

2. It should look something like this

from       Liam nisbet – The Really Useful Blog       Liam@TheReallyUsefulBlog.com

to           Your Name <your.name@gmail.com>
date       15 January 2010 17:06

subject:  Some very cool stuff that you’d be interested in

Now you need to highlight the section that says @whatever.com (in the case above it would be @TheReallyUsefulBlog.com) and copy it. (Ctrl + V)

3. Ok, now go to the top of the page in Gmail and look to the right of the search box. There are two small links next to the button that says “Search The Web”. Click on the link that says “create a filter”.

4. You will now see a selection of boxes and the first one will say “From:” to the left of it. In that box, paste your @whatever.com then click on “Next Step”.

5. Now this is the really cool part. What you’ll see here is a list of options for filtering your emails. Firstly, check the option at the top that says “Skip The Inbox” then check the box next to “Apply The Label”. You can then create a new label for your filter so let’s say we create the label “The Really Useful Blog”. Then just click “Create Filter”. If you have a few emails already in your inbox from that sender, there will be a check box that asks “Also apply filter to x conversations below”. Check that box too to include those emails.

Hey presto! You’ve just created an email filter! Now your mail will go straight to your labeled folder instead of your inbox and you can read it at your leisure.

It’s worth remembering that you can also create filters using any parameter from your emails. For example, you could choose to have any mail that starts with AName@ or that contains particular words or has a particular subject line.

Here’s another example. You receive a piece of junk mail and it’s too much of a ball ache to go through the unsubscribe process. Well, just create a filter for that email but instead of giving it a label, just check the boxes that say “Skip The Inbox” and “Delete It” and you’ll never even see it again! Magic!

In the next post I’ll describe how to create an autoresponder in Gmail and spam the spammers!

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