Enhance Your Gmail Productivity with Multiple Inboxes

If you're a fan of Inbox Zero, meaning that you try to keep your inbox as clear and non-distracting as possible through the use of filters and quick archiving, you've probably run into the issue of accidentally archiving a client's email. You don't look at the folders for a while and then realize the mistake. How can you avoid this in the future?

If you use Gmail, it's pretty simple. I use Gmail for all of my email, even those messages you get from brian.altenhofel@vmdoh.com. Gmail has a nice Labs feature called Multiple Inboxes. Multiple Inboxes allows you to add up to five panes to your Gmail home page that show messages from the search string you choose. I use it to put all of my emails with my active clients on the home page just to the right of the actual inbox. This way, I can set the filter for those emails to archive on receipt, thus keeping my inbox clear of stuff that will be filed anyway, while still viewing new, very important emails as they come in.

Here's how to set it up.

1. Log in to Gmail (I know, this should go without saying, but I've been offering PC support to people recently).
2. In the upper right corner, you'll notice a little green flask. Click it.
3. Scroll down until you see Multiple Inboxes. Click "Enable".
4. Scroll either to the top or the bottom and click "Save Changes".
5. You should now have a Multiple Inboxes tab in your Settings.
6. Enter the search queries you want to show for each pane, and select where to place these "inboxes".
7. Click save changes.
8. Buy yourself a beer for lunch.

If you've never taken advantage of Gmail's search function, the queries might be confusing to you. Here are some examples:

• to:someone@example.com will show messages not in your Sent or Spam folders address to someone@example.com
• from:someone@example.com works much the same as above
• in:all can be added to any query to search all folders
• in:spam can be used to search only the spam folder
• label:your-folder-name will show emails that have been filtered and archived with a particular label

You will likely want to use the last one (label) on Multiple Inboxes. When using that query, you replace all spaces and symbols with hyphens. If you are unsure of what the query is for a certain label, go to it the normal way by clicking on it. You will notice that the search box has a query added. Copy the query and paste it into Multiple Inboxes.

I hope this has been very helpful to you. I find it to be a great productivity enhancer, and I hope that you do, too.