Your Guide to Getting Productive with Gmail: Apps & Extensions

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We've covered the nuts of productive email use with Gmail. By now, with an average electronic mail load, you should be able to power through it all inside fifteen minutes. Only that doesn't mean y'all tin't cut down on even more than time, or make Gmail an even more powerful application, with the help of a few browser extensions and even some desktop applications.

To quickly epitomize: in part one we looked at consolidating your accounts. We configured each email account you lot own to send messages down the pipes and into your Gmail account. Nosotros configured your Gmail business relationship so you lot would have the ability to reply to those messages while still making it look like you replied from the address the message was initially sent to. Read part i here.

In part two, we looked at managing the flow of email and information quickly, efficiently, effectively, and hopefully, permanently. To accomplish this we adult a processing work flow for all incoming email, prepare a serial of filters and decided on a set of labels to categorize your messages. Read part two here.

Firefox Browser Extensions

Firefox browser extensions are perhaps the easiest and most common way to interface with and enhance Gmail. Fortunately, Firefox browser extensions work with nearly browsers that have been congenital on Firefox. I use Flock, for instance, which tin handle the majority of them.

GTDInbox turns Gmail into a chore managing director as well as a post director. As discussed in previous articles in this serial, it's important to turn emails into actions – GTDInbox helps y'all achieve this. GTDInbox also features some absurd personal data management features. Check it out here.

Gina Trapani's Better Gmail Greasemonkey script compilation provides a variety of very useful features for Gmail such equally keyboard macros and attachment reminders (a lifesaver if e'er I saw one). Works anywhere Greasemonkey works.

DragDropUpload makes the Gmail interface seem more than integrated with your operating organization by enabling drag and driblet attachment uploading, instead of having to use the Browse push button. Handy especially if you've got a lot of folders to dig through. Cheque it out here.

Gmail Loader takes mbox athenaeum and a whole range of other email annal formats and empties them into Gmail. The Web site even mentions the developer's intention to build in Outlook PST back up, which would've been handy when I offset switched to a Mac – finding a way to get all the data in my PST across was one of the hardest parts of switching. Gmail Loader is a fantastic way to go one-time email archives in a searchable format, or just backed upwardly in the deject. Have a wait.

It tin go really abrasive when your browser keeps insisting that you use a desktop awarding to handle mailto links. GmailTo is a Greasemonkey script that solves this problem by forcing Firefox to open mailto: links in Gmail as new messages. Check it out hither.

We did our all-time to get all your email accounts funneling down into your one Gmail account, just in that location are e'er going to be times when you don't have a option simply to proceed certain accounts divide. Gmail Manager is a Firefox add-on that handles multiple Gmail accounts, keeping you notified of new messages and diverse other statistics in each one.

Desktop Applications

Although web apps are all the rage these days, desktop applications still form the basis of the calculating feel and are important to most people's daily work flow. Thus it's just natural that we'd need a few desktop apps to broaden and enhance our utilise of Gmail.

The Gmail Notifier is Google's official desktop application for Windows and Mac Bone X. Its office is simple: notify you when you've got new mail. I don't really use notifiers because I notice they distract me from my work, but if you're the kind of person who must be notified of new messages, or peradventure have to respond to clients immediately, a notifier could be handy. Cheque it out here. For Linux users, there's an alternative here.

Postal service, Entourage, Outlook, or Thunderbird are all incredibly useful. I like the Gmail interface then I don't recommend a desktop client for actual apply, but they exercise get in easier to continue an offline backup of your letters. Specially when you lot brand purchases, send and receive invoices and liaise with clients via emails, keeping a backup can turn out incredibly useful fifty-fifty years downward the track (peculiarly should legal bug arise).

A text expansion utility volition be insanely useful. These aren't Gmail or email specific applications, but they will heave your email productivity by a long, long style. I recommend trying TextExpander for Mac and PhraseExpress for Windows. If yous're not fond of those apps, there's always Typinator (Mac) and FastFox (Win) as alternatives.

And finally, Skype. Some conversations practice, rarely, exceed the scope of email. I remember any practiced communicator should be able to handle just nearly any conversation through email, merely on occasion it might get too complicated because of the technical nature of the bailiwick thing. Or perhaps the complication is because of the personal nature of the communication, in which case one has to wonder why on earth you lot're using the Internet to have that chat. In whatsoever case, that's when you know it's time to jump onto Skype and sort information technology out. Or, go in the car and do information technology face-to-face up.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/your-guide-to-getting-productive-with-gmail-apps-extensions.html

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