Automatic Canned Messages – One Reason I Am Learning to Love Gmail

Admittedly, I am new to the gmail scene.

I’ve always used Hotmail, even before Microsoft took them over.  Yes, way back then.  I have been hesitating, then hesitating, and even hesitating to move to another webmail service.  There are many things I don’t like about Hotmail, but, hey, there are also many things to get used to somewhere else.  For years I’ve had this struggle, until just recently.

I signed up for a gmail account quite some time ago, but I just never got into using it.  Many parts of gmail are foreign to me, including the whole idea of labels instead of folders.  It’s just one of those things.  Gmail has kind of changed the whole email thing, to the point that sometimes it’s difficult to get into it.  Well, recently I starting using gmail a bit more.  I haven’t tossed out my Hotmail account just yet, but I’m tinkering, and I love tinkering!  I hooked up my domain with Google apps so I can have my domain’s emails handled by gmail and I kinda like that.  I hate using desktop-based email clients because I like being able to check my email from any browser anywhere.  I also didn’t like some of the other options such as Squirlmail.  SO, I starting messing with gmail once again.

Also, since beginning to write for MakeUseOf.com, I’ve had to use gmail for my @makeuseof email address, which is fine.  All of this just keeps pointing me towards taking a real look at gmail.  Well, while handling a large number of emails from MakeUseOf.com readers, I was able to learn a trick or two in order to handle the influx:

First off, I realized how easy it was to create a filter that would filter emails with specific words and give them a specific label.

This was really cool, because I had a lot of emails from people needing the same thing.  This way I could glance at just the emails filtered for me.  That was cool enough, but I can also do that with Hotmail.  I’ve talked about filtering before, but gmail’s ease is overwhelming.  The thing with Hotmail is that it uses folders.  That means that a message is either in one folder or the other.  That’s OK, but I’m beginning to prefer the flexibility of having the option to have the message show up in several places.  In other words, with gmail I’m able to have a message tagged with several labels, helping me to organize them better.  For instance, I can label all emails from a specific person with their name (or whatever) and also label all emails with a specific topic and messages from that person would show in both places.  I like that.

I realized that I could add and delete labels at will.

I could even remove the “inbox” label and remove the clutter from my inbox.  I think that the “archive” option does the same thing (removes the message from the inbox but still keeping the other tags, AND if there aren’t any, the messages will still show in search results – cool!).

I was extremely impressed with how easy it is to create and use canned messages.

If you find yourself replying with the same or similar message over and over again, you can save it and have it ready with the click of a button.  Oh, boy did this feature make my day!  In the situation with all of those emails from MakeUseOf readers, my job got A LOT easier!  All it took to reply was to click reply, click the canned response I wanted, and click send!  It sounds kind of impersonal, but in the situation it was quite necessary and it really wasn’t a big deal not responding personally.

Using filters WITH canned messages sealed the deal for me!

When I figured out that I could set up a filter, and have a canned response AUTOMATICALLY replied to the sender, I almost fell out of my seat!  This means that I could have SEVERAL things going on, people emailing me asking for SEVERAL different things, and all I have to do is set up a few filters???  Now that takes the cake!  And I love cake!

Anyways, I know gmail has been around for some time now, and that there is a possibility that some of the features are very well known, but I am still impressed!  I’m ready to learn gmail!  I’m also ready to learn how gmail can help ease the transition from other email providers.  This should be fun.

Related posts:

1. More About Email Filtering
2. The Little known Ability to Use An Email Client with Your Windows Live Hotmail Account
3. Forward Grandcentral.com Voicemails to Two Email Addresses