Automatic sorting of letters in Gmail. Shortcut display settings


How we organize our workplace Our productivity depends. Chaos in papers, mail, and files on the computer increases the chaos in the head. Thus, even the most simple tasks can be time-consuming. What if suddenly you don’t find the required piece of paper in your usual “pile” or forget where last year’s order templates are on the computer? You will have to spend a lot of time searching instead of doing direct work.

Here I want to describe one way to organize email. Because Email is one of the main “heaps” leading to chaos. It is through this communication channel that most of us receive most of the tasks or notifications for our work. How to organize the storage of your mail so as not to lose it important letters, don’t forget to respond to new tasks, don’t get caught up in a hundred “important” things to do?

Many people sort their email by sender. As a result, their letters are sorted by last name and each folder contains correspondence with specific person. I did the same at first. But later I realized that this approach does not take into account that several people can participate in the correspondence - the letters will be scattered in different corners. It is also impossible to determine exactly which letter we responded to (we wrote a response, issued an order, made a request, or something else). And if one of the letters had important information, which you need to remember on long term? How can you find this letter then? How to remember who wrote it?

Another problem with sorting by last name is great amount folders that you should scroll through in search of new messages. I take a different approach. All my incoming correspondence is divided into 3 groups: “incoming”, “by category”, “resolved”.

Absolutely all incoming letters are sent to the “inbox” group. Here they are stored until I read them and take a certain response to them. While the letter hangs in the inbox, I have a task assigned to me.
After completing a response action (depending on what was required: a response letter, solving problems with the program, filling out an order, making a decision, etc.), the letter is moved to the “resolved” folder. The requested task has been completed.

The “category” group simply means several folders into which letters are placed instead of the “resolved” group. For example, for some projects, letters are stored in separate folders, all correspondence in one place. Folders are created for individual major projects, for particularly important counterparties. In this group also separate folders Automatically sent emails are highlighted. There is a separate “remember” folder, which stores information that will have to be used periodically.

For example, my email structure now looks like this:
Inbox
-Solved
-Not interesting
-Remember
-Counterparties
-Automatic
-Project1
-Project2.

This way I don’t get lost in the hundreds of emails that come to me during the working day. Each letter has a mandatory reaction or response. Not a single letter remains missed or forgotten, because... While the letter is in the inbox, the task is not completed. As tasks are completed, the inbox is cleared and remains readable at all times. It's very nice to look at an inbox with just a few emails. This means that there is no rush and you can work calmly.

Often people who work for a very long time do not answer even the most simple letters They are not sorted at all or simply sorted by last name. You can ask them about it.

Tags: email, work organization

Almost all computer users have their own electronic mailbox, email address, or as it is now called - “ soap". Nowadays, without this very thing soap, nowhere. Why such a strange name? Yes, because in English the email address is “electronic mail » (abbreviated e-mail), sounds in Russian approximately like “soap”. Our people are smart and have a great sense of humor, so they gave it this name. So don't be surprised if someone asks you "soap." This means that a person needs your email address to write you a letter or send you some information.

Many people have a mailbox, but not many know how to use it correctly, so working with mail does not always bring joy to a person, often even the opposite. Take for example such a simple operation as sorting letters.

From my own experience, I know that many people do not even realize that letters in an electronic mailbox can be sorted and put into folders so that one or another message can always be easily found.

Many people have their mail in their main inbox for many years. Naturally, sometimes it is simply impossible to find the necessary letter in such a heap of documents, or at best you will “kill” the whole day doing this.

If you look through your mail every day and put it in folders, then the process of working with mail will take you a little time and will even become enjoyable. Moreover, sorting letters is not a complicated procedure at all.

So, let's start sorting the letters in your email box. I will show you using Yandex mail as an example, but in other mailboxes all procedures are very similar, so watch and remember.

  • Go to your mail in the folder “ Inbox»;
  • Select any letter, put a tick in front of it and go to the link in the right top corner « Move to folder" Until you check the box next to the letter, this link will not be active.

  • A window will open with the inscription “ Enter folder name" and so far only one folder " Inbox" In the box, enter your name of the folder in which the letter you have selected will be stored and press the ENTER key on your keyboard.
  • Create any folders in exactly the same way and store letters in them.

In the video below I show in more detail what else you can do with your emails and how to remove or add internal folders.

If you have

Each region of the country has its own branch of Russian Post - the regional department of the federal postal service. All branches are divided geographically into ten macro-regions. The total number of post offices exceeds 40 thousand. There are two branches in Moscow and the Moscow region, united into the Moscow macroregion. Also located in the region are the Vnukovo logistics center, which processes international mail, and an automated sorting center (ASC), located not far from Podolsk. In them, parcels and letters are distributed and sent before post offices six regions - Tver, Tula, Vladimir, Ryazan, Kaluga, Moscow. If a client from the ASC service area sent a letter, for example, to Vladivostok, then his letter will first go to the Podolsk ASC, and then go to the main sorting center at Far East. Where it will already be sorted to the final recipient. The Village went to an automated sorting center in Podolsk (the largest in Russia and Eastern Europe) to see how they sort letters and parcels.

What happens at the sorting center

The automated center serves the six regions closest to it. This means that it sorts simple letters by post office, registered letters and parcels - to regional post offices. Outgoing shipments from these areas for recipients from all over Russia are also processed here. After the envelope falls into the mailbox, it is taken out and brought to the post office, where the letter is inspected and the date of sending is set. Then the postal containers with letters are taken to the sorting center.

In total, 1,650 people work there, about 350 employees work per shift, the center’s area can be compared to a large factory - it occupies 29 thousand square meters. The sorting center operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week and seven days a week. The conveyor only stops during the hours Maintenance. The equipment here is Italian.

A large share of the center's dispatches in Podolsk are letters from various companies (including government organizations, for example fines from the traffic police) and catalogues. Parcels, parcels, EMS items, registered letters, valuable letters and first class items are also processed here. The sorting time is 21 hours, during which time the shipment must travel from the entrance to the dispatch. About 3 million pass through the center every day postal items. The hottest season is April-May, when all kinds of congratulations from the state are sent, and, of course, November-December - when everyone sends gifts and New Year's letters.

Photos

Yasya Vogelgardt






How to speed up work

The company says that the delivery time for letters and parcels has been reduced. This happened thanks to two things - automation and logistics. In the first case, the construction of an automated sorting center in Vnukovo helped, where manual labor is minimized and all parcels are sorted using special equipment. According to employees, now from the moment of entering the international departure center until departure to the country, no more than 22 hours pass. Previously, such parcels could lie for days. Besides, new team Russian Post has revised its routes and removed unnecessary points from them. For example, if previously a resident of Ryazan sent a letter to the addressee in his city, then the letter was first sent for sorting to Moscow and only after that was returned. Now such shipments are sorted within the city.

How letters are sorted

First, operators scan the barcode and register the cargo. So in special program information appears about what type of mail and how much it was received. The data is also uploaded to the official website of Russian Post, where the client, knowing the identifier (alphanumeric image for international parcels and digital for domestic Russian ones), can find out the location of his shipment. All containers are distributed between departments - written correspondence, parcels and express shipments. In the express parcels workshop, the sorting process is partially automated: operators read the barcode of each hand scanner, find out the address and put it in a bag that goes to the desired city. According to employees, this is because most express items are irregular in shape, so manual sorting is more acceptable.








Manual labor is also involved in sorting regular letters, but it is not much. There is also equipment for sorting large format letters. First, such letters are faceted - operators put them in boxes so that they are located on the same side to each other. Then the stacks are loaded onto a sorting machine: the items fly along a conveyor, a scanner reads the address from each and distributes them according to directions into cells. This happens quite quickly - 12 letters are processed per second. If the address or index is written illegibly or contains some errors, the scanner sends a photo of this letter to the video encoding section. Employees of this department continuously manually enter indexes from images of letters. To do this, you need to have a quick reaction - to be able to deal with the letter in no more than 30 seconds, since it is during this time that the sorting machine makes several circles. In addition, employees need to know the index range for the whole of Russia in order to deal with discrepancies between the index and address, for example. Of course, if the address is something like “grandfather’s village,” then the letter will be returned to the sender.

Then the letters are taken out of the cells, and the operator places the items in blue branded boxes, sticks labels with the addresses of branches or post offices and places the boxes on the conveyor belt. Here the final stages await them - formation into containers, loading and shipping.





What happens to parcels

Parcels are distributed by six automated lines. The first is intended for international shipments - customs cleared shipments from Vnukovo are received here for addressees living throughout the ASC service area, except Moscow. For Moscow, shipments are sorted directly at the Vnukovo center. The outermost belt is intended for oversized cargo, and the rest are for standard parcels. All items are manually loaded onto a high-speed conveyor belt, which moves at a speed of 2.2 meters per second. Boxes and parcels are automatically scanned and sorted into 320 outputs that correspond to different post offices. A mesh is installed under the conveyor belt - sometimes due to high speed conveyor and slippery packaging, parcels slide down. Therefore, the operator regularly checks the grid and returns the parcels to the sorting belt.

In the place where containers with parcels are unloaded and loaded, there are Yantar installations. They check shipments for radioactive emissions and explosion hazards. If a package seems suspicious to the operator, he cannot open it himself, but must hand it over to the security service. In general, verification of domestic shipments usually takes place at post offices when submitting the shipment for delivery.









When the number of letters and the state of your email begins to make you sad and depressed. To bring order to your online correspondence storage and achieve the coveted “Inbox Zero”, use the tips from our selection.

Find Zen in a folder « Inbox »

Gmail allows you to customize your inbox style: Default, show Important First, Unread First, Flagged First, and a Priority type that sorts emails based on their importance.

If you want to really control your email, the Default and Priority types are the most useful: one categorizes, the other prioritizes. You can change the view mailbox until you find the option that suits you. Open the Settings menu and click on the inbox tab, under which a menu will open to select the type of this folder.

Bypassing Inbox

There is no need to manually sort messages for later archiving. If you want some emails (for example, related to a work project, invoices, etc.) to be sorted automatically, create a filter that will bypass the Inbox folder.

To do this, open the Settings menu, click on Filters and blocked addresses, create new filter and enter the necessary parameters, for example, all letters with the word “earnings” in the subject. After this, you should specify that all future filtered messages go directly to the archive, bypassing the inbox. You can configure filtered messages to be automatically marked as read.

Keywords

Gmail's archive system ensures that users never delete anything. There may be some rationale behind this, but this state of affairs means that searching for a specific letter requires you to wade through piles of electronic waste, even if they are perfectly organized and color-coded.

Gmail's automatic search option is fine, but it's much better to take your search settings into your own hands. If you have a letter and think it may be useful in the future, forward it to yourself, adding a few unique, memorable keywords or sentences. Now, instead of searching by date parameters, you can simply enter keywords/sentences and the letter you are looking for will appear in front of you.

Search like a pro

If you need to find any email that does not have useful keywords, you will have to ask for help search engine Gmail. In this section you will find information about additional operators search that will help you find the desired text in the ocean of 20 thousand+ old letters.

  • Exclude emails with certain labels using the function label: [label name]. This is especially useful when you want to disable chat logs. Just enter label:chats in the search field. You can also search for posts with specific labels via +label: [label name]. The + and – operators also work with other search settings.
  • Find emails sent and received on certain period using operators before:[dd/mm/yyyy] And after:[dd/mm/yyyy].
  • Search for an attached file by its name or type using the operator filename:[filetype]. For example, if you need a letter with attachments PDF files, enter in type filename:pdf.
  • Regular search does not include messages from Trash or Spam - use in:trash or in:spam respectively. To make the search check absolutely all mail folders, use the command in:anywhere.

Highlighting

Labels are useful for sorting and categorizing your emails in Gmail. But sometimes they are really hard to read, especially if there is a colorless wall of letters in front of you. You can make your emails visually organized by using color-coded labels.

Move your mouse to the left column and hover over the label you want to assign a color to. Click on the downward arrow and a menu of options will appear in front of you. Hover over Label color and select the option you like, thereby setting it for a specific shortcut. You can add your own own options colors.

Removing old attachments

Google users get 15GB free space for Gmail, Google Drive and Google+. If you find that the limit has been reached - deleting old emails with large attachments will be the best solution.

Find similar messages you can do this: go to the search field and click on the downward arrow to perform an advanced search. Mark the item There are attached files and click on Search. Or enter has:attachment in the search field. To find letters exceeding specific size, regardless of attachment status, enter following parameters advanced search size: next to size, select “greater than” and enter a number in bytes, kilobytes or megabytes, then set the search.

Smart Shortcuts

You can also organize letters, creating additional sub-shortcuts. Using them, you can classify letters even more accurately. For example, instead of tagging a post with a simple “Work,” create a thread “Work>Important Projects.”

Select a letter and click on the “Shortcut” button, create a new label and enter its name. Then check the box next to “Place label under” and select the parent element from the drop-down menu.

Adding a Viewport

Adding an option preview in your inbox will help sort them much faster, without having to open each one separately.

Open the Settings menu and go to the “Lab” tab, which has been in beta for quite some time and offers many still experimental features. Find the "Viewing Area" item and turn it on. After you save your new settings, a Show Multiple Folders button will appear next to the gear icon. Click on it whenever you want to enable or disable the View Area, or change its settings.

Chat on the right side. Done

Chat on the right is another experimental Gmail feature and a great way to relieve left side screen. Go to the “Lab”, find the “Chat on the right side” function, activate it and save the changes. After this, the chat will move to the right side of the screen, freeing up the left column.

Shortcut display settings

To change viewing options for individual shortcuts, go to the Shortcuts tab in the settings. There is a list there: System shortcuts, Categories, Circles and others created by you. You can choose the following options: show or not show shortcuts, show only if there are unread messages. Select a setting for each individual shortcut and save your changes. If you decide to hide all shortcuts, then new setting: "More" in the left column.

Use email aliases

You are getting additional opportunity sort emails using aliases email addresses. Just add +any.alias to the address after the username but before @gmail.com. You will still receive emails in your inbox because sending a message to " [email protected]" is the same as sending a message to " [email protected]" or " [email protected]».

Aliases are often used to filter unwanted messages(For example, " [email protected]"), but you can also use them to filter important emails.

Automatic forwarding of important messages

First you need to add an address for automatic forwarding, for which it is better to obtain the consent of the recipient. Most likely, the forwarding addresses will belong to one of your relatives, colleagues, or yourself. Select a tab Forwarding and POP/IMAP in settings, add required address email to forward and click Next. A confirmation email along with a verification code will be sent to given address. You or another recipient must click on the link in the confirmation email, after which automatic forwarding will begin.

After setting up forwarding, you can create filters through the filters and blocked addresses tab in the settings. Create a filter according to new requests, on the next screen configure forwarding to the selected one for certain messages address.

Master the art of filtering

Filters become truly powerful when you use them creatively. If you have already mastered basic filters (filtering messages from a specific sender or domain name and then sending them to the desired folder), it's time to get acquainted with other interesting options.

  • Use filename:[file type] to create filters for different types media. For example, filename:jpg | filename:png to send all messages with attached photos to the photo folder.
  • Filter messages that contain your email address in the fields "From" And "To whom" and send them to the desired folder. Now you will immediately find your notes/reminders/to-do lists in one specific place.
  • Create a hashtag (eg #never delete) and special reserve Gmail account for especially important letters that cannot be missed or lost. Then install a filter that will automatically forward emails with this hashtag to your backup account.

I love tried-and-true schemes - stories about how people created a system, organizing the space and things around them, adapted services and applications to their needs and got the most out of them.

The simpler the tool, the easier it is to actually make it his- and it’s all the more interesting to read about how others do it.

This is what my filter list looks like in Gmail. Work emails and notifications from trackers are sorted into project folders, emails from stores are sorted under the “Shopping” labels, emails from an annoying PR who refused to remove me from the mailing lists are sent straight to the “Trash.”

One of these basic systems - Email. We all work with it differently: for some, “ Inbox“thousands of messages, and I get a nervous tic if I see more than five emails in this folder; Some people set aside a separate hour in the morning and evening for processing mail, others check every minute so as not to miss anything.

I have a few working rules - if you shop in online stores, sit in in social networks, use at least a couple of note-taking and blogging apps, and text more than just three friends, these rules can become yours.

Everything I write below is relevant for Gmail.com(I’ve only been using it for exactly six years) - but everyone has normal large services there are similar functions.

I never delete emails

In six years, my mailbox is only 71% full - with all the photos high resolution, videos, archives of entire magazines, documents and attachments, plus the history of all chats in Gtalk. I receive about a hundred letters a day - and after I no longer need them, instead of a button Delete I press Archive. The letter is sent to the folder All Mail, and at any time I can raise the history of any correspondence by keywords, tags, attachments, recipient's name and dates - search in Gmail, of course, is as good and convenient as searching in Google.

This approach is called the “ordered chaos method” and is recommended by all books on organizing things and time. The main thing you need to remember to do before archiving is to add a couple of important tags(labels). My examples: “Payments and documents”, “Shopping”, project names, “Repairs”, names of employers.

I don't use folders

Strictly speaking, none of the users Gmail"but he doesn’t use them - only tags. This is fundamentally different, relaxed way of storing information: one letter can be simultaneously tagged with a dozen tags, and at the same time lie in All Mail and not loom before your eyes, calling for action.

You don't have to manually sort and move emails between folders while trying to decide where they should be saved forever. If anything, you will always find everything. One letter can be in several “folders” at the same time - for example, the same message can contain a “receipt”, be an “archive”, and be associated with a trip to “Tasmania”. Then, when the time comes to sort through all the receipts from the trip, you can sort all the letters according to the principle “there is a tag “Tasmania” and “receipt””, and for the travel archive you can click on a more general tag.

Yes, I always check that “I agree to receive special offers” checkbox - sometimes even before I make my first purchase. All good sellers As part of their loyalty programs, they send coupons, personal discounts, special offers, notifications about client sales three days before the start of official sales - why not take advantage of them on occasion?

The main thing is that all these mailings do not fall into Inbox. To do this, you just need to create several filters (don’t panic, it’s three clicks): then all letters will be put in a separate place and automatically received necessary tags and calmly wait in the wings, without getting lost along the way.

I create small filters

  • I received a letter from Booking.com, it’s useful in principle, but I don’t want to read it directly in my inbox, of course, it’s not that urgent;
  • I pressed the button More and selected the item Filter messages like this;
  • Gmail sorted through all the emails from the service to make sure we both knew it was what I needed.

  • And I created a list of rules:
    • always skip the Inbox folder (any mailings in the Inbox are a mess and distraction),
    • assign the Travel tag to such letters,
    • never send emails from this address to the Spam folder, because they are still a little useful,
  • categorizing them as “Special Offers” is useful for those whose Gmail mail is automatically sorted by bookmarks, I don’t, but just in case.
  • the last tick selects all the letters that are already lying around in the mailbox and “combs” them according to the same rules.

When I'm ready to buy something or go somewhere for the weekend, I'll type the name of the newsletter, tag or store address into the Gmail search and see letters with all special offers on one screen. You can safely collect coupons for free shipping and activate the personal discount waiting for you and go to the store.

One address is enough for me

Let's say your email is [email protected] (just an example).

All letters sent to addresses [email protected] , [email protected] and even letters for [email protected] will come just for you. A period (or several) can be placed anywhere in the email address.

How can this be useful? For example, to create filters in advance:

  • you can train yourself to leave only the address in online stores [email protected] and create Gmail filter: "All emails sent to [email protected], you need to mark it with the “Online stores” tag, do not put it in the Inbox and Spam folder, and immediately mark it as read.” Or, conversely, mark it somehow specifically to make it easier for you to find the delivery notification.
  • another option is an address like [email protected] - everything written after “+” is also not considered a separate address. There may be a small problem here in that some sites know about this and may not accept such an address during registration so that you do not filter their letters.

Update, May 2017

Since the publication of this post, Gmail has added several services - for example, it launched its iPhone application, created the Inbox service, which I still don’t like, but I need to figure it out, and began sorting letters into tabs.

A very cool service has also appeared in the world: Unroll.me, which allows you to glue special offers and mailings from stores into one long roll even faster. But basic instructions remain the same, so I just updated this post and fixed the broken pictures.


I'm 33 years old, live in Hobart (Tasmania), work in financial UX, ride a scooter, and completed a Master of Interactive Multimedia at UTS, Sydney. I love cats and cats.


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