Some cool Gmail features not to miss

This website prides itself in being lazy and lethargic when it comes to reporting about tech updates. In some sense it is like the famous BBC channel, which might be the last to report any news, but if it is on BBC, then it ought to be true. The same can be said about us. In this post we will discuss one cool Gmail features that has been around for ages, but very few know about. Those who know about it don’t understand its significance and how it can be used.

Before Gmail arrived, only alphabets, numerals and underscore was allowed while creating an e-mail id. Gmail came and it allowed a dot (.) to be included in the email id. So far so good!

Very few people noticed that the placement of the dot or even its presence is irrelevant in the email id. That includes some of my techie friends!

Let us assume that your email id is nelsonmandela@gmail.com. Now you will also receive any email sent to the following email ids, to your primary id.

n.elsonmandela@gmail.com, ne.lsonmandela@gmail.com, nel.sonmandela@gmail.com, … , nelsonmandel.a@gmail.com

As a matter of fact you can place as many dots as you like in your email id and it will still work. For example n.e.l.s.o.n.m.a.n.d.e.l.a@gmail.com is perfectly fine.

Wait, because we are not finished! With just one email id, you also have access to the following email ids as well. nelsonmandela@googlemail.com, n.elsonmandela@googlemail.com , ne.lsonmandela@googlemail.com , nel.sonmandela@ googlemail.com … nelsonmandel.a@googlemail.com and n.e.l.s.o.n.m.a.n.d.e.l.a@googlemail.com

In addition to all these, you can add any random string at the end of your email id by placing a plus (+) sign in between the email id and the random string. For example ‘nelsonmandela+anyrandomtext@gmail.com’ will work as your email id.

Now the question is that all these are really cool features and good to pass time. But how can we actually use these feature to our advantage.

1. Use one email id for all the purpose

I use different email ids for different purpose like personal, official, subscriptions etc. But I could as well use the same email id with the above feature. I can use different versions of the same email id for different purposes and then with proper filters can auto-forward them to corresponding folders.

2. Track and block unwanted subscriptions and spams

Sometimes we have to enter our email id at different forums, websites etc to use their service. Say the website is subscriptionwebsite.com. So over here we can enter the email id as neslonmandela+subscriptionwebsite@gmail.com. When we don’t want to be disturbed by the website we can filter the term subsriptionwebsite@gmail.com in the recipient field.