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In this video, we're going to talk about two features that you can use to manage your mail:
Filters, which can automatically sort your mail for you, and the Search Mail feature,
which you can use to find a specific message.
Let's start by creating a filter. The first thing you should do is decide which types
of messages you'd like to filter. In this example, I get a lot of emails from Facebook,
and I'd like to automatically label all of the messages that they send me. I'll select
one of the Facebook messages. And then click More, and Filter messages like these.
Here, you can choose the search criteria that you want. You can filter based on the sender,
the subject, or keywords that appear anywhere in the message.
Now it has already put in some criteria for me, based on the message that I selected a
moment ago. If you need to, you can change any of these criteria. For example, I know
Facebook sends emails from several different addresses, so I'm going to change this to
Facebook, to make sure it catches all of the emails they send me.
When you're done, click Create filter with this search.
Here, you'll need to choose one or more actions that you want Gmail to take when a message
fits the search criteria. I want it to apply the Facebook label and I also want to archive
it so it won't appear in my Inbox.
I'm going to place a checkmark here, so it will filter all of my existing messages that
fit the criteria. And then click Create Filter. Now, to view all of my Facebook emails, I
can just click on the Facebook label.
If you ever need to modify a filter, click on the Gear icon to go into your Settings,
and click Filters, and here you can edit or delete any of your existing filters.
Now let's say that you received an important message a few months ago, and now you need
to find it again. Instead of scrolling through all of your messages, you can use the Gmail
search box to find it. Just type some search terms and then click the Search button, and
your results will appear below.
If you don't see your message here, then you can try different search terms, or you can
click the drop-down arrow to do an advanced search.
So filtering and searching your mail are really useful features, and once you get used to
using them, you'll always be able to find your important messages when you need them.