Ten tips for making the most of Google Mail

Google continues to make its case as the only Web destination you ever need — much to the delight of its investors. One of the more useful Google offerings is the Google Mail — until recently known as Gmail — Web-based emailing application. Although technically still in beta, Google Mail is in fact a very useful and feature-rich mostly-complete application. However, not all of the features that can be found in Gmail are readily apparent. The 10 things listed in this document will draw out some of the hidden features and make this Web-based email client event more appealing.

1. Labels
When it comes to organising your Google Mail inbox, there is perhaps no better mechanism than the label feature. You can label any email with a keyword or keywords of your own choosing. From that point on, that email will be identified by its label(s) and, most importantly, can be searched and listed according to that label. Using this feature, you can basically index or tag your email for later retrieval; only you get to decide what that system for retrieval looks like.

Creating and assigning labels can be accomplished under the More Actions dropdown box.

2. Conversations
A set of emails associated by a common label is known as a conversation. Certain actions, such as moving to a different folder, can be accomplished in a single pass on the entire conversation. This can save a tremendous amount of time if your conversation is a lengthy one. One caveat, don't add an email to a conversation unless it is really an integral part of that thread, because any changes made to a conversation will be made across the board.

3. Searching multiple labels
The feature that separates Google Mail's Web-based email service from everyone else's is the searching capability — something that Google does very well. Besides the typical keyword search, where you type in a word or phrase, click the search button, and wade through the corresponding results, you can perform more advanced searches.

Advanced searches rely heavily on the labeling system outlined in number one above. Using the label: designation, you can perform Boolean searches on the contents of your Gmail account. Here are some examples:

• To search for more than one label (siegfried and roy):
  label:siegfried AND label:roy
• To search for one label or another
  label:siegfried OR label:roy
• To search for one label but not another
  label:siegried AND NOT label:roy

4. Searching query words
If you click the "Show search options" link of the main Gmail page, you get to a Search Options dialogue page.

In the Search Options dialogue you can specify the usual search parameters like From or To a certain address, email with a particular subject line, and even designate whether the email is read or unread. If you are looking for that one incriminating photo attachment of your spouse, you can set parameters like "must have an attachment and have been received within these dates."

While this GUI interface has many options, there are even more available to those who want to master the query operators that govern the Google search box. For example, you could type this search:

label:siegfried AND NOT label:royhas:attachment before:2005/11/17

That search would find emails labeled Siegfried and not Roy, with attachments, and dated before November 17, 2005.

The table below shows you a complete list of query operators that you can use in advanced searching.