- Image via CrunchBase
As you may or may not know, I’ve been part of the internet, and email, since 1994, and email has been part of my life even longer. All things internet have evolved at light speed over the ensuing 16 years and this certainly includes email, which is still an indispensable part of most of our lives.
But along the way email started to get out of control.
There became too much of it, SPAM got really bad, and it started taking too much valuable time away from the things you should be doing.
Add to that the old way of sending, receiving and storing email required having a single point where your emails lived and if you worked from more than one place, keeping things in synch was not that easy.
Why use Gmail?
Here are a few reasons why you may want to look at Gmail as your primary email handler:
- Spam handling – Gmail’s spam filters are better than any of the other filters I’ve used. There are the occasional filter mistakes and I do have to check my spam folder from time to time, but most of the time the filters work flawlessly. I have had the same email addresses for over 15 years and the amount of spam some of them get would curl your hair, so have great spam filters is absolutely essential and Google’s are just that.
- Search – Google’s legendary search capabilities are built into Gmail and it makes it very easy to find an email simply by searching using a variety of terms and methods. With Google’s unique archiving feature you can easily find what you seek even if it is in a very old email.
- Conversations – Google’s default method of displaying their email is by grouping emails by conversation. Gmail keeps track of the original email sent or received and then each subsequent reply to the original email (the video’s below will go over this in more detail. It’s a great feature) is added to the bottom of the original so you can easily keep track of the conversation. And just recently Google has made a change to make conversation style optional for people who dislike it.
- Safety – If your hard drive fails you won’t lose everything (and yes, this did happen to me 2 years ago and I was so thankful I had Gmail as a back-up).
In today’s tech tip I’m going to show you a quick and easy system on using Gmail to manage all your email accounts – even if you have 10 or 15 different addresses – and even if you still use Outlook or some other desktop email system (desktop means you run the software from your computer rather than online) – in a way that keeps spam to almost zero and gives you a very efficient and effective email system that works really well and that you can access from any computer or smart phone.
Video Training
Below are three videos from HelpMeRick.com that will show you the system I’ve been using successfully myself for the past two years. And I have to admit that I still have my company emails also go through Outlook out of habit and because I still have that ‘little’ sense of concern that I won’t be able to get online or the internet will go down or something – but what happened instead was a hard drive failed and I lost everything on my computer – Gmail was fine).
How to use GMail Part 1
How to use GMail Part 2
How to use GMail Part 3
So there you have it. Try it out and see how it works for you.
If you found this tip valuable, please leave a comment below and let us know how it worked out for you, and share it with your friends.
If you’d like more tech tips, please let me know what you’d like help with by commenting on what you’d like help with.
