Yesterday I showed you out to use ‘rules’ in Outlook.com to organize your messages and stop spam. (You can click here to read that article.) Today, we’ll begin our look at how to do the same with Gmail. For Gmail, you’ll use Filters.
We’ll start by opening Gmail. Click on the gear icon in the upper-right and choose Settings from the drop-down menu.
Click on Filters and Blocked Addresses at the top.
Click on Create a New Filter.
You can create filters based on who the message is from or the recipient of the message. You can also sort by subject or by words contained in the message. Other options include sorting by size and whether the message contains attachments. You also have an option to include chats that fit the criteria.
Below, I’m creating a filter for messages from Dropbox.
Once you’ve filled in your criteria, click on Create filter.
Now, choose what happens to your message. You can choose to immediately archive the message or mark as already read. You can also apply a label. This is the equivalent of sending the message to a file.
You can select an existing label or create a new one.
You can also forward or delete messages. There’s also an option to Never send to Spam. This is a good one to add if you find that messages you want to read are getting accidentally filtered out. For example, if your Cyn’s Tech Tips Newsletter was being sent to the spam folder, you could create a filter for all messages from cynstechtips@cynmackley.com and mark Never send it to Spam.
If messages are sorted into the wrong category, you can select criteria and then select which category you want messages to go to.
You also have the option to apply the filter to email exchanges it applies to. To save your filter, click on Create filter.
You can also create a filter based on an existing message. Open the message and click the three-dot menu icon in the upper-right.
Choose Filter messages like this from the drop-down menu.
Choose your criteria and then click Create.
