GMail Wishlist – Features I’d love to have in GMail
1. Tagging conversations
Search in GMail is useful but not perfect. A common problem I face is not being able to search for a particular email thread just because I don’t know what to search for.
Ex. I call up my friend Asok and ask him to email me his mobile number. He sends me a blank email with his phone number in the subject. No text, no words, just the number.
Say, I need to find his number a few months later. By then, a few thousand emails would have cluttered my inbox and the email I’m looking for is lost in the haystack. Of course I can short-list emails by using filters (“from:Asok”, in this case) but this may not always work.
A possible solution – The ability to tag a conversation and search by tags seamlessly. So I could tag the above conversation as “asok mobile number” and later search for “asok mobile” and fetch the email.
2. Sharable permalinks for email threads
GMail assigns a unique URL to each email message, which look something like https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/12345abcdec79ed9d . If you send an email to more than one of your contacts, it would be great if I can later send this URL to one of those people and it opens up that email thread in their inbox. This could be incredibly useful – you can refer to a previous conversation with a simple URL. You can share this URL, put it as a reference in your bug tracker etc.
What do you think about these ideas? Do you have any ideas you wish to share? Post a comment.
1. Cant you already do 1 with labels. It would create a whole host of labels, but thats not costing you anything right?
2. Yeah 2 would be nice, although you can share search URLs, but permalinks for email threads would be really nice.
1. Cant you already do 1 with labels. It would create a whole host of labels, but thats not costing you anything right?
2. Yeah 2 would be nice, although you can share search URLs, but permalinks for email threads would be really nice.
You know, Google heard you and liked your ideas so much they took their time machine and implemented them in the past! 😉
Search by tags using “label:asok label:phone number”
And while there are no permalinks to threads, there are permalinks to searches which could locate the email thread you want to share. See feature 4 in this blogpost: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/5-little-known-gmail-features-you-may.html
You know, Google heard you and liked your ideas so much they took their time machine and implemented them in the past! 😉
Search by tags using “label:asok label:phone number”
And while there are no permalinks to threads, there are permalinks to searches which could locate the email thread you want to share. See feature 4 in this blogpost: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/5-little-known-gmail-features-you-may.html
p.s. Another way to search for Asok’s email if you forgot to tag it would be to do something like “from:asok subject:9” assuming this is an Indian cell phone number, they usually start with 9.
For more operators, RTFM 😉 http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=7190
p.s. Another way to search for Asok’s email if you forgot to tag it would be to do something like “from:asok subject:9” assuming this is an Indian cell phone number, they usually start with 9.
For more operators, RTFM 😉 http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=7190
@Ashwan Great tips!
@Ashwan Great tips!
@Puneet – Ya, that’s a possible workaround, but finding the right label may itself become a problem! I took the example of a phone number, but Ashwan’s solution made it look easy.
What if someone sends you a “receipt” as an attachment and has nothing in the subject and body? How would you find that?
@Puneet – Ya, that’s a possible workaround, but finding the right label may itself become a problem! I took the example of a phone number, but Ashwan’s solution made it look easy.
What if someone sends you a “receipt” as an attachment and has nothing in the subject and body? How would you find that?
“from: whoever has:attachment”
“from: whoever has:attachment”
Or if you know the file format or name, the search even applies to that.
So if it was an Excel sheet, you’d type
“from:whoever has:attachment xls”
“from: whoever has:attachment”
“from: whoever has:attachment”
Or if you know the file format or name, the search even applies to that.
So if it was an Excel sheet, you’d type
“from:whoever has:attachment xls”
Not sure if you’ve seen this, but something quite interesting:
http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html
It’s called ‘Become a Gmail Ninja’!
Not sure if you’ve seen this, but something quite interesting:
http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html
It’s called ‘Become a Gmail Ninja’!