Big thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring this video.
Using multiple inboxes here within Gmail is a great way to highlight your most important messages or to make sure that things that get labeled don't get buried here on the left hand side. So how can you add multiple inboxes and configure them for the way that you want to? It's actually a lot easier than you think.
Here in the top right hand corner of the screen, we can click this gear icon, and if we scroll down, you'll notice that we have a number of different ways to view our inbox.
Now you're probably most familiar with the default view where we have all of our messages listed here in a linear fashion. But we have several views to choose from, including the last one here called multiple inboxes.
In my example, you can see that I have two of my labels, "Action Required" and "Waiting for Reply" displayed here on the right hand side.
And the great thing is that whenever I need to add a new label, so for example, maybe I'm going to select this message here and I'm going to say that yes, I need to deal with that, it's immediately going to appear here within this action required section, not get buried over here and force me to have to remember to come and click and select this label.
I also have a second one here called "Waiting for Reply". So these are perhaps messages that I've sent and I want to make sure that I follow up and don't miss their replies so I can see them here as well.
Now the nice thing is that we can continue to minimize these sections if we don't want to see them as well. Maybe I only want to see "Action Required" and not "Waiting for Reply".
Well, we can do that as well. And if we hover our mouse here between the divider, we can adjust the size and the display. But let's go back to our setting here.
We're going to come down to multiple inboxes, and once you have this selected, we want to come here and select Customize. Now, this is where we can decide what will appear within our multiple inbox section. Now note, you are limited to a maximum of five different sections.
You can customize how they are named, and we can even choose in terms of how many conversations will be displayed at a given time, because depending on the label or the search query that you choose, you probably don't want all 125 messages displayed on the multiple inbox section.
So by default it's set to five. I'm going to leave it at five here. And we even have a choice in terms of where it is displayed on the page. But what's most important to remember is how you can add a new section.
It's not quite as simple as just clicking into one of these fields and selecting a label. And the good news is that you're not limited to labels either. So how can you add your own labels or other search criteria? Well, let's go back to our inbox.
And when we click on any of these labels, you'll notice that at the top of the screen within the search bar, it is actually displaying the search criteria. So let's say we want to add the newsletter label to our new multiple inbox section.
I'm going to click on newsletters. And here you can see, all I need to do is come up here and copy this search criteria. And then we're going to go back to multiple inboxes and select customize. And all I need to do is paste it here within section three.
Now, lastly, we can give it a name. You don't have to, otherwise it's going to say this as the section label, but I'm going to continue with my pattern of adding an emoji. I'm going to add a newspaper emoji, and I'm going to say, "These are newsletters."
Let's keep it nice and straightforward. Now, don't forget, don't just click to your inbox at this point. We want to make sure that we scroll down to the bottom and select save changes.
Now I'm brought back to the newsletter label because that's where I was last. Let's go back to our inbox. And here you can see I now have my new section called "Newsletters" right here.
If I want to minimize that, I can, and this is also a good example of where it's instilling that five message limit. I've got over 700 newsletters within this label, but it's only going to display the first five.
Whenever you want to quickly access all of the messages within your section here, all you need to do is select the number here on the right hand side, and that will take you directly to your labels or whatever that search criteria is.
So let's choose a search criteria for our last section because you don't have to add labels. Maybe I want to create a new section here that are all of the messages sent from a particular individual.
I'm going to come up here and select this show search options just to remind you that you can create a very complex filter if you want. In my case, I'm going to insert this particular email address.
I want to see all of the messages that are coming from this sender, but I could add other criteria such as a key subject line in terms of a size, or maybe I just want to highlight all of the messages that have an attachment.
Maybe that might be helpful to you. But I'm going to keep it simple in this example.
I'm going to say search, and yes, it's going to go ahead and find all of the messages from this sender, but all I have to do is come up here, select it, select copy, and then you guessed it, we're going to come back to multiple inboxes customized and under section four, I'm going to paste in that search criteria.
Over here on the side, let's continue with my theme. I'm going to choose this envelope, and I'm going to say, "From Scott." I'm going to keep it nice and simple.
These are all of the messages from this particular sender. Once again, I'm going to come down here and hit save changes. Let's go back to our inbox, and now we have that new section down below. I'm seeing one of five of many.
Yes, there are many messages from this sender, but now I have access to them directly here from within my inbox.
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