How to Organizie Your Email's Inbox

Most of the reasons why people don't like using email is because of the overwhelming amount of mails coming into their inbox. In one of my previous blogs, I shared how to organize incoming mails so you can easily locate the most important once by using labels and filters. This time, we will see how to organize the inbox so we can keep the unread and important mails on top. 

To start with, log in to your gmail account . And then, on the upper right hand corner of the page, click on the settings button, scroll down until you reach the section "Inbox Type". There, you will find different options on how to format your inbox. Let's discuss how each of the format works and which one should work best.

Screenshot of a Priority Inbox format 

Default

Under this format, your inbox shows different categories of mails: 1) Primary, 2) Social, and 3) Promotions. When you click on the customize option, you can choose which of these categories must be visible. You can also see the other categories avaiable which is the updates, and forums. 

Important First

Under this format, mails coming from senders that you interact with (by reading their messages or responding to them) are the once posted on top.

Unread First

In this format, all mails that you haven't read yet are posted on top "whatever category" they belong. These mails are arranged in chronological order, with the most recent displayed first.

Starred First

Under this format, mails that you mark with a star are displayed first. These can be mails from first time contacts or people with whom you don't have any recent interactions yet. Thus, Gmail doesn't recognize their mails as important.

Priority Inbox

Here, you can assign unread and important mails (from certain senders) to be always placed on top, while other categories are placed on another section below. You can decide how many inbox sections (from 2 to 3) to be displayed below your priority mails. See actual inbox from the first screenshot.

In this format, by default, your inbox will be divided into four sections. You can assign a certain category of mails to be displayed on top (preferrably the important and unread) while you can assign more on the succeeding sections. You can also set the number of mails to be displayed per section (with a minimum of 5). Once you're okay with the setting, scroll down to the bottom portion of the page and click "Save".

Multiple Inbox

With Multiple Inbox, you can assign another category of mails in another column, or section above or below your default inbox. 

An example of inbox using Multiple Inbox format, where mails from Google are assigned to be displayed on the right section or column.

To set this kind of format for your inbox, click "customize" under the Multiple Inbox section under the settings. And then under the Multiple inbox section, you can assign mails from certain senders or with certain words to be displayed on your preferred section. In the sample below, mails coming from Google were assigned to Section 1. And then under Multiple Inbox Position (see the bottom portion of the screenshot), the additional section is set to the right side of the default inbox. 

To assign mails from a sender or mails containing certain words on a specific section, simply type the name of the sender or the target words in the text fied of a specific section number, starting and ending with quotation " " marks. And then type in the name of the column or section on the Section Name. Don't forget to click "Save" if you're already okay with the settings.

By properly formatting your email's inbox, you can free yourself from the hassles of exhaustive mail lists. This way also, you can stay focused on the most important mails, and lessen the chances of missing them.