Gmail Labs Quick Links: Using Stored Searches
I use Gmail as a mail aggregator for many of my accounts. I honestly do strive for Inbox Zero but I’m not very consistent. As part of the quest, I’ve become relatively proficient at typing in advanced search query strings, but it is a real time sink to hand enter those every day. Enter Gmail Labs.
On June 5, 2008 Google announced Gmail Labs in the official Gmail Blog. Being an early adopter, I turned labs on in Gmail almost immediately after reading the post but didn’t look at the features closely. This morning I woke up and realized I was failing miserably in maintaining my inbox and decided to make a dent. The frustration led me to search gmail help to see if there was any way to save/bookmark advanced searches. That’s when I stumbled on to Quick Links.
Gmail Labs, being experimental, are not enabled by default. You may have to Manually Enable Gmail Labs in Your Account. Once labs are enabled, you are allowed to control the features on an individual basis. As you can see if the photo above, I have Quick Links enabled.
For example, the Twitter Quick Link shows all of the email from Twitter in my Inbox using the search below. One nice touch is that clicking on the Quick Link re-populates the search field allowing you to specify additional search criteria.
from:twitter in:inbox
I know this feature won’t solve all of my Inbox Zero issues, but I’m hoping it will help me quickly wade through items that I don’t want processed by a rule and want to look at before archiving or deleting. Happy Cleaning!
