Tuesday Tech Tidbit

Gmail has a nifty feature called templates, which allows you to compose and save an email message that you anticipate sending to various recipients over a span of time.  If you find yourself composing similar email messages and sending them to various people, this feature might save you some time. I use Gmail templates to send acknowledgements to students who complete an interest form for the Makerspace club.  I never know when a student will fill out the form.  Nonetheless, I have a template email ready to go so I can send them information about the club. You need to activate Templates in your Gmail settings before this feature shows up. To do this, select the gear icon at the top of Gmail. Then select See All Settings > Advanced > Enable Templates . To save a template, you should first type a draft email message.  Then select the More button at the bottom of a new composition window (the "snowman" button).  You can then open the Templates menu and sav...

Does your Gmail inbox look like a tornado touched down? I have some easy suggestions to help you gain control over your inbox and employ a system of organization that will make your digital life much more manageable.   Don't delete emails. Archive them. When you delete emails, they are gone forever. With some messages, you might regret this down the road. The Archive button removes an email from your inbox but does not delete it. Use labels .  Labels allow you to assign a name to your messages.  This makes them easy to locate. Use filters .  Filters allow you to automatically perform certain functions to emails as they arrive in your inbox.  You can mark certain messages as read.  You can automatically archive certain messages so they never appear in your inbox.  In the video below I demonstrate these Gmail features.  Let me know if you have any questions about organizing your Gmail messages.

Gmail has a little secret.  You actually have a limitless amount of email addresses that you can use with your Gmail account. Wait, what? Have you ever wanted to register for something online but already used your email address once and couldn't use the same email address a second time? Then I have a secret for you. It's called Gmail Plus Addresses . Gmail actually provides you with an unlimited amount of email address possibilities, all tied to your one inbox.  Allow me to elaborate. My email address is robitaia@hudson.k12.oh.us (or simply robitaia@hudson.edu).  But Google's little secret is that I can also receive emails to my inbox if someone adds a + and something else before the @ symbol in my address.  For example, if someone sent an email to robitaia+1@hudson.k12.oh.us, I would still receive it to my inbox!  Or robitaia+period1@hudson.k12.oh.us. Awesomesauce! I can use this address to register for a trial for some cool online resource. Maybe more than on...

Gmail provides some handy ways to organize your messages, which makes it easier to search through your emails down the road.  Using labels you can tag messages based on the sender.  This makes it easy to display all emails originating from a particular person.  Filters allow you to program Gmail to apply certain rules to messages.  For example, you can program Gmail to automatically apply the Andrew Robitaille label to all messages originating from me.  Labels and filters are easy to configure, and they make your emails much more organized and easy to sift through.  The video below demonstrates how to apply labels and filters to your Gmail.