Some time ago, a Google engineer decided to work independently on a new Email project after asking for help from a user who complained of spending too much time looking for messages in the email box. on April 1, 2004, almost by chance and thanks to an autonomous initiative, exactly 10 years ago, Gmail was born, which today is the most used online e-mail service in the world. Although 15 years have passed since the birth of Gmail and many more since the birth of Email, there are many people who continue to use email and Gmail in the wrong way .
Here are 10 types of errors that we have all made but which, instead, should be avoided or, in any case, minimized to the maximum.
1) Create many drafts
When you press the Write button in Gmail, the message composition window opens.
If you write something and then press the close button you save that message in the drafts.
This can be used to have some sort of notepad in which to save to-do lists, but more likely it will be filled with junk and partial messages never sent.
Everyone who uses Gmail will find hundreds of empty and useless messages to delete in Drafts.
2) Delete messages to keep your inbox clean with no unread messages
Once, when emails were limited with the space available, it made sense to delete messages that were no longer needed. Today, however, since there is all the space and since messages of all kinds arrive every day, it is not convenient to delete them, but rather organize them into folders or labels using filters. You can filter the emails so that they do not appear in the main section or you can archive the messages to remove them from the inbox, without however deleting them.
READ ALSO: Order the inbox with filters and aliases in Gmail to manage the emails received
3) Mark everything as 'read'
As for the previous point, in Gmail it is not convenient to mark everything as read to make order, you can leave them unread, but organize them in various folders.
The mistake is to mark messages as read, thinking that we will return to them later. Also keep in mind that only messages that are also received in the Inbox are counted as unread by notification programs and mobile applications, the rest are ignored.
But she is completely forgotten.
4) Having too many unread emails
Following from the previous point, there is an error unread messages in the main mailbox.
SEE ALSO HOW: See only unread messages in Gmail with quick link
5) Send yourself Email to keep files or notes .
In the past I have also used Gmail as a space to store documents, files or attachments by sending me messages myself.
Gmail was the first Email service to provide a huge GB space for files for free so it was also normal to use all this space (it is said 10 years ago) as if it were a cloud drive.
In recent years, with the emphasis on true cloud services, this method of working must be avoided.
It is better to have an app like Onenote or Evernote or Dropbox, Google Drive and Onedrive for larger files.
ponon you should have to send yourself emails of documents, links and attachments that you want to save. Yet sometimes it just seems easier than sending an email, because then it will be in your inbox forever.
6) Exaggerate with labels and folders
Gmail supports nested labels. Creating labels is useful for organizing emails similar or from the same senders. The important thing is that they are not too many and that they all appear in the list on the right without scrolling otherwise we can forget about many categories and many messages received.
7) Make a mistake between Reply and Reply to all
Sometimes you hit the " Reply " button in a group message to share a thought that will only be received by the person who sent the last reply. Other times you hit Reply All, when you actually wanted to write a private reply.
To avoid this type of errors there are two very important and important functions in Gmail:
- Use the cancel function of a wrong email
- Put Reply All as the default behavior on the Reply button to Send Email to a group of contacts quickly
8) Reply to emails without changing the subject
Email discussions often end up going off topic.
If these are important emails, when replying to an email, check whether it is appropriate to change the subject and not keep the old one from the first email.
9) To think that Gmail cannot be used offline
Although with more limited functions, you can also open Gmail as an offline program when you have no internet connection.
10) Do not use advanced search operators
The goal of Gmail, since its inception, was to provide an email service that was easy to search.
For this reason, the search in Gmail is very powerful, better than any other similar service, only that you need to know the operators and commands to use it.
Another article explains the most useful advanced search operators in Gmail .
READ ALSO: The general guide to Gmail
