Gmail made easy

Google’s Gmail is among the best free email services that we have on the web today. But if you ever have had that nagging feeling that there ought to be a better way to work with Gmail, then what follows is just what you have ordered.

* If your first task of the day is typing www.gmail.com after opening your browser, then you must know that there are faster ways to reach Gmail. One of the easiest is to create a desktop shortcut that allows you to access Gmail with one click. Just go to Gmail Settings > Labs, and enable Offline Gmail. This will prompt you to install a programme called Google Gears and once that is done, go to Settings > Offline and click Create a Desktop Shortcut for Gmail.

* One of the best features of Gmail is a tool that archives emails. This feature allows you to keep emails you don’t want in your inbox. This way you can keep a clean inbox and yet keep all the data with you. To archive an email, look at the Archive button on the top panel of the inbox. Also on the panel below the inbox.

* If you want to be able to check your Gmail account using a dedicated application like Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird, click the Settings tab found on the top bar of the webpage, go to the Setting page and select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP option. Then, enable either POP or IMAP (Internet standard protocols for email retrieval), save the settings, and start receiving mails through your listed mail clients.

* Ever subscribed to a mailing list where the current conversation has nothing to do with you? If you still don’t want to unsubscribe and yet don’t want to be disturbed by constant updates then stop the friendly spam with the Gmail Mute function. Select the email in the thread and hit the M key to auto-archive all incoming messages in the conversation. The thread will stay muted until you “unmute” it. Gmail also automatically unmute’s the message if your address appears in the “To” or the “CC” field. 

A correction
Our report ( Gmail made easy ) published on April 13 had wrongly referred to Gmail's experimental feature called autopilot. The company has not released any such feature. The error is regretted.