Adding filters and rules to your Gmail account is one of the easiest ways to keep things organized and to make sure that you can manage your email the way that you want. So in this video I'm going to show you everything you need to know about creating, editing and managing your Gmail filters.
Let's get started with an example. Here within my inbox, I have a number of emails that are from my account and have this in the subject line event confirmed. In fact, three of my first four emails here are these event confirmed emails.
These are simply telling me that an event has been set up, but they're not very helpful and therefore I don't want to see them appear in my inbox. I want them to skip my inbox entirely and maybe I want to apply a particular label so I can go and review them later.
So in order to create our filter, we can either start by coming up here to the search mailbox and start to enter in our criteria, or we can click on one of these emails and at the top of the email, if we click on the more option, you'll see there's an option to filter messages like these.
I'm going to select this option, and once again, it's going to bring us up here to this search criteria, but it's going to give us some additional options.
Now the first thing that you may notice is that the only thing that it has brought in is the from address, and in this case it happens to be my email address. But if I come down here and select search, you will see that that's bringing in a lot more than just the emails that I want to filter. In fact, it's bringing in all of the emails that are from me.
That is not what I want. So what I'm going to do is come up here and select show search options. Once again, we still have my email address here, but I'm going to want to come down and be a lot more specific.
Now there's a number of different fields which we can add. We can include details such as who the email was sent to, what was included in the subject line, and even drill down into the body of the email as well, including things such as certain words within the message or maybe words that are absent. We can even go into greater detail such as the size of the message or if it includes an attachment.
But in our case, we want to focus on that subject line here in the background, you can see that all of them have this event confirmed as a part of the subject line.
So I'm going to come up here to the subject line. I've already typed this in previously, so I'm going to include event confirmed and we can go ahead and select that search button. Once again, you'll notice that we have a create filter option, - But I recommend that you start with a search.
Why? Because now I can be sure that the filter that I'm about to create is only going to apply to the emails that I wanted to. Here you can see those three emails have been returned, so now I can confidently go ahead and create that filter.
Once again, we're going to return to that search bar, come over here and select show search options. We still have all of those options available to us, and then we're going to select create Filter.
Now, in fact, it hasn't actually created the filter just yet because we have to answer some other important questions such as what exactly is going to happen when a message that matches this criteria enters into our inbox.
And we have about a dozen options available to us here. The first one here is to skip the inbox, which is really another way of saying archiving that message. And in my example, that's exactly what I want to do. I don't want it to start in my inbox, I want it to come over here to my all mail area here within Gmail.
But we're actually going to go one step further and add a label as well. I can always come back and select that search filter options, and we'll be returned to this screen here, some of the other ones for us to consider.
Mark as Read, you will know the difference between something that is grayed out or something that you've opened up or that you've read versus something that is unread.
And maybe in my example, I want to make it unread as well. So I'm going to check that box. We can choose if we want to add a Gmail star to those messages. We can choose if we want to apply a label to those messages. And if I check this box and come to this dropdown, I will see a complete list of all of my current labels.
But if I want to add a new one, don't worry. I can do that here as well. In this case, I'm going to say a new label and I'm going to call this event Con Confirmations, something very simple like that. I'm going to select Create, and now I will have that new label.
You can see it actually appear here in the lower left under that label section. Now, if you'd like AI to help you create smart labels right here within Gmail, I recommend that you check out Same box with AI technology, same box prioritizes essential messages, saving you hours of time each week, and by learning from your behavior, same box will clean up your inbox, get rid of spam, and organize your emails into relevant folders.
Best of all, same box works with any email provider.
To get started, go to sanebox.com/sim or click the link in the description below. We also have the option to forward these emails to someone else, forward it to another address. You will see here in the dropdown, I have already set up a forwarding email address if I want to choose this option. If you want to forward it to another address, you will need to click on this add forwarding address button, which will take you into Gmail settings.
Just note that if you choose this option at this stage, you will have to start and create your filter all over again from scratch. It will not save it in this state, but this can be helpful if there is certain criteria and you want to forward it to someone else or perhaps another address that you manage Below that is the option to delete the message altogether.
Now, in my example, you can see that this is grayed out. I can't actually select it, that's because I selected Skip the inbox. You can't skip the inbox, meaning archive it and delete it at the same time. But if I did want to delete it, it would send that message directly to the trash. And remember, things in the trash will remain for a full 30 days before they are removed or deleted permanently.
Below that, we have the option to never send it to spam. Do you have a particular sender that always ends up in your spam folder even though you want to read it or be made known of that message?
Here, you can choose to never send those messages to spam. We can also choose to reply with a template, and if you've created Gmail templates in the past, you can reply with a template which you've created.
Just be very careful that the template that you have created or selected is appropriate for whatever criteria you have selected. We can also choose to always market as important or never market as important, and we can also categorize these particular emails. Now, these categories are the default or standard categories here within Gmail, including things such as primary social and promotions.
Now, the very last option here is very important. It states also apply the filter to three matching conversations. We know from doing our search that we have three existing conversations here that apply to this search criteria.
Now this is up to personal preference and maybe depending on the criteria that you've entered, if I leave this unchecked, these messages will remain in my inbox and everything that we've set up here will apply for new emails or new messages in the future.
But if I do select this option, it will apply this and therefore immediately archive it, mark it as read and apply these particular labels qs well.
So I'm going to go ahead and leave this as checked, and I'm going to select create filter. We are brought back to our search criteria, but let's go ahead and return to our inbox. And you'll notice that those emails are now removed. They no longer exist here in our inbox. And if I come over here down to labels and select event confirmations, you will see that there are our three emails and all of them have been marked as read just like we created within our filter.
But what if you've made a mistake and you want to go back and edit your filter or what if you just want to keep track of all of the filters which you've created in the past In order to do so, we're going to need to come up here to the right hand corner of our screen, select the gear icon, and then select See all settings.
And if we come over to about the fifth tab, you will see something called filters and blocked addresses. Here we will see a complete list of all of the filters which we've created and are currently applied to this account, including at the very bottom, the one that we just created. Here. We can see it includes the from address, the subject, and then it will also tell us what it is doing, skipping the inbox marking as red and applying this particular label.
So if I need to come back and edit this filter or any of the other filters here, I can come over here to the right hand side and select that edit link, and we will first be brought to the search criteria. So here I can change or add other email addresses.
Maybe I do want to include certain keywords or maybe I only want to include messages that have an attachment. I don't have to make changes on this screen. Maybe I'm happy with the settings that I've set up here. I'm going to select continue, and now we can come back and edit our filter criteria.
So maybe in this example, I don't want the messages to be marked as read. I'm going to uncheck that box, and then I'm going to say update the filter. I will be returned to the filter screen here within our settings. And you can see that this filter has been updated. And if there's a filter that you no longer need or is not behaving as you would like, you can also choose the delete option and remove any or all of your filters here on the right hand side.
Now, while we're here within our editing screen, let's take a look at some of the other helpful ways in which we can create filters.
Let's start by taking a look at this first filter up here, which you can see includes several different email addresses. I'm going to go ahead and select edit, just so it's easier to see.
You may want to apply the exact same filter, meaning you want a number of different messages, perhaps from a number of different senders to go to the same label or to have the exact same behavior, but you don't need to create a different filter for every single sender.
In this example, you can see that I've included three different email addresses, but the key thing is, is that I've added this operator or capital or meaning whenever I receive an email from this person or this person or this other person, all of my filter behavior, if I select continue here, everything that I've selected on this screen will apply to all of them.
Now, there's another search operator, which may be helpful for your filters and rules, and that's the and operator, capital A and D. Now, while this will not make sense in the from line, it could make sense within the two line, meaning maybe you want to apply a filter or apply a special label if someone sends a message to you and your boss or to you and someone else in particular.
In this case, this will only look for messages where a message has been sent to both of those individuals on the exact same email. Now, a third search operator, which can make your filters so much more powerful, but also easier to use is if you use the asterisk, which will be used as a wild card when you include it within your criteria.
How often have you received email messages from a particular domain, a particular sender? However, they have different people or they have different addresses in the front of their email address.
In this particular example, I've chosen to use an asterisk before the at symbol in this address, meaning that any email coming from this domain name will have this filter applied.
I don't have to worry if it's from support or hello or marketing or from John. All of it will be caught as a part of this filter. So this can be extremely helpful if you don't want to include multiple email addresses or if you want to just zero in on a particular domain.
Now, if you're wanting to learn even more ways on how to keep your Gmail account organized and simple to manage, I encourage that you watch this playlist next and to be notified of new SimpliVity videos. Make sure to subscribe. Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
- Adding filters and rules to your Gmail account is one of the easiest ways to keep things organized and to make sure that you can manage your email the way that you want.
So in this video I'm going to show you everything you need to know about creating, editing and managing your Gmail filters. Let's get started with an example here Within my inbox, I have a number of emails that are from my account and have this in the subject line event confirmed. In fact, three of my first four emails here are these event confirmed emails.
These are simply telling me that an event has been set up, but they're not very helpful and therefore I don't want to see them appear in my inbox. I want them to skip my inbox entirely and maybe I want to apply a particular label so I can go and review them later.
So in order to create our filter, we can either start by coming up here to the search mailbox and start to enter in our criteria, or we can click on one of these emails and at the top of the email, if we click on the more option, you'll see there's an option to filter messages like these. I'm going to select this option, and once again, it's going to bring us up here to this search criteria, but it's going to give us some additional options.
Now the first thing that you may notice is that the only thing that it has brought in is the from address, and in this case it happens to be my email address. But if I come down here and select search, you will see that that's bringing in a lot more than just the emails that I want to filter. In fact, it's bringing in all of the emails that are from me. That is not what I want.
So what I'm going to do is come up here and select show search options. Once again, we still have my email address here, but I'm going to want to come down and be a lot more specific. Now there's a number of different fields which we can add. We can include details such as who the email was sent to, what was included in the subject line, and even drill down into the body of the email as well, including things such as certain words within the message or maybe words that are absent.
We can even go into greater detail such as the size of the message or if it includes an attachment. But in our case, we want to focus on that subject line here in the background, you can see that all of them have this event confirmed as a part of the subject line.
So I'm going to come up here to the subject line. I've already typed this in previously, so I'm going to include event confirmed and we can go ahead and select that search button.
Once again, you'll notice that we have a create filter option, but I recommend that you start with a search. Why? Because now I can be sure that the filter that I'm about to create is only going to apply to the emails that I wanted to. Here you can see those three emails have been returned, so now I can confidently go ahead and create that filter.
Once again, we're going to return to that search bar, come over here and select show search options. We still have all of those options available to us, and then we're going to select create Filter. Now, in fact, it hasn't actually created the filter just yet because we have to answer some other important questions such as what exactly is going to happen when a message that matches this criteria enters into our inbox. And we have about a dozen options available to us here.
The first one here is to skip the inbox, which is really another way of saying archiving that message. And in my example, that's exactly what I want to do. I don't want it to start in my inbox, I want it to come over here to my all mail area here within Gmail. But we're actually going to go one step further and add a label as well.
I can always come back and select that search filter options, and we'll be returned to this screen here, some of the other ones for us to consider. Mark as Read, you will know the difference between something that is grayed out or something that you've opened up or that you've read versus something that is unread. And maybe in my example, I want to make it unread as well. So I'm going to check that box.
We can choose if we want to add a Gmail star to those messages. We can choose if we want to apply a label to those messages. And if I check this box and come to this dropdown, I will see a complete list of all of my current labels. But if I want to add a new one, don't worry. I can do that here as well. In this case, I'm going to say a new label and I'm going to call this event Con Confirmations, something very simple like that.
I'm going to select Create, and now I will have that new label. You can see it actually appear here in the lower left under that label section. Now, if you'd like AI to help you create smart labels right here within Gmail, I recommend that you check out Same box with AI technology, same box prioritizes essential messages, saving you hours of time each week, and by learning from your behavior, same box will clean up your inbox, get rid of spam, and organize your emails into relevant folders. Best of all, same box works with any email provider. To get started, go to sanebox.com/sim or click the link in the description below.
We also have the option to forward these emails to someone else, forward it to another address. You will see here in the dropdown, I have already set up a forwarding email address if I want to choose this option. If you want to forward it to another address, you will need to click on this add forwarding address button, which will take you into Gmail settings.
Just note that if you choose this option at this stage, you will have to start and create your filter all over again from scratch. It will not save it in this state, but this can be helpful if there is certain criteria and you want to forward it to someone else or perhaps another address that you manage.
Below that is the option to delete the message altogether. Now, in my example, you can see that this is grayed out. I can't actually select it, that's because I selected Skip the inbox. You can't skip the inbox, meaning archive it and delete it at the same time. But if I did want to delete it, it would send that message directly to the trash. And remember, things in the trash will remain for a full 30 days before they are removed or deleted permanently.
Below that, we have the option to never send it to spam. Do you have a particular sender that always ends up in your spam folder even though you want to read it or be made known of that message? Here, you can choose to never send those messages to spam. We can also choose to reply with a template, and if you've created Gmail templates in the past, you can reply with a template which you've created. Just be very careful that the template that you have created or selected is appropriate for whatever criteria you have selected.
We can also choose to always market as important or never market as important, and we can also categorize these particular emails. Now, these categories are the default or standard categories here within Gmail, including things such as primary social and promotions.
Now, the very last option here is very important. It states also apply the filter to three matching conversations. We know from doing our search that we have three existing conversations here that apply to this search criteria.
Now this is up to personal preference and maybe depending on the criteria that you've entered, if I leave this unchecked, these messages will remain in my inbox and everything that we've set up here will apply for new emails or new messages in the future. But if I do select this option, it will apply this and therefore immediately archive it, mark it as read and apply these particular labels as well.
So I'm going to go ahead and leave this as checked, and I'm going to select create filter. We are brought back to our search criteria, but let's go ahead and return to our inbox. And you'll notice that those emails are now removed. They no longer exist here in our inbox. And if I come over here down to labels and select event confirmations, you will see that there are our three emails and all of them have been marked as read just like we created within our filter.
But what if you've made a mistake and you want to go back and edit your filter or what if you just want to keep track of all of the filters which you've created in the past In order to do so, we're going to need to come up here to the right hand corner of our screen, select the gear icon, and then select See all settings.
And if we come over to about the fifth tab, you will see something called filters and blocked addresses. Here we will see a complete list of all of the filters which we've created and are currently applied to this account, including at the very bottom, the one that we just created. Here. We can see it includes the from address, the subject, and then it will also tell us what it is doing, skipping the inbox marking as red and applying this particular label.
So if I need to come back and edit this filter or any of the other filters here, I can come over here to the right hand side and select that edit link, and we will first be brought to the search criteria. So here I can change or add other email addresses. Maybe I do want to include certain keywords or maybe I only want to include messages that have an attachment. I don't have to make changes on this screen. Maybe I'm happy with the settings that I've set up here. I'm going to select continue, and now we can come back and edit our filter criteria.
So maybe in this example, I don't want the messages to be marked as read. I'm going to uncheck that box, and then I'm going to say update the filter. I will be returned to the filter screen here within our settings. And you can see that this filter has been updated. And if there's a filter that you no longer need or is not behaving as you would like, you can also choose the delete option and remove any or all of your filters here on the right hand side.
Now, while we're here within our editing screen, let's take a look at some of the other helpful ways in which we can create filters.
Let's start by taking a look at this first filter up here, which you can see includes several different email addresses. I'm going to go ahead and select edit, just so it's easier to see. You may want to apply the exact same filter, meaning you want a number of different messages, perhaps from a number of different senders to go to the same label or to have the exact same behavior, but you don't need to create a different filter for every single sender.
In this example, you can see that I've included three different email addresses, but the key thing is, is that I've added this operator or capital or meaning whenever I receive an email from this person or this person or this other person, all of my filter behavior, if I select continue here, everything that I've selected on this screen will apply to all of them.
Now, there's another search operator, which may be helpful for your filters and rules, and that's the and operator, capital A and D. Now, while this will not make sense in the from line, it could make sense within the two line, meaning maybe you want to apply a filter or apply a special label if someone sends a message to you and your boss or to you and someone else in particular. In this case, this will only look for messages where a message has been sent to both of those individuals on the exact same email.
Now, a third search operator, which can make your filters so much more powerful, but also easier to use is if you use the asterisk, which will be used as a wild card when you include it within your criteria. How often have you received email messages from a particular domain, a particular sender? However, they have different people or they have different addresses in the front of their email address.
In this particular example, I've chosen to use an asterisk before the at symbol in this address, meaning that any email coming from this domain name will have this filter applied. I don't have to worry if it's from support or hello or marketing or from John. All of it will be caught as a part of this filter.
So this can be extremely helpful if you don't want to include multiple email addresses or if you want to just zero in on a particular domain. Now, if you're wanting to learn even more ways on how to keep your Gmail account organized and simple to manage, I encourage that you watch this playlist next. And to be notified of new Simpletivity videos. make sure to subscribe. Thank you so much for watching today's video.
And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
