2 Click the Add to Tasks icon, pointed out earlier in Figure 2-11.Gmail opens the Tasks pane and adds a new task that includes a link to the email message.
Setting up a vacation responder
Remember the days when you'd leave on vacation for a couple of weeks and leave your work behind? No, I don't either! These days, we live in a cruel world where people send you a message and expect an instant reply. And it's a sure sign of pending cultural collapse that you're expected to reply even when you're on vacation. Boo!
Okay, fine. Maybe you do have to reply while you're out of the office, but there's no rule (yet) that says you have to reply immediately. Unfortunately, your correspondents might not know you're away, so to forestall an angry “Why didn't you answer my message in less than ten seconds?” follow-up, set up a vacation responder. A vacation responder — also known in the G Suite world as an out-of-office autoreply — is an automatic reply that gets fired off to everyone who has the temerity to send you a message while you're trying to have a relaxing vacation with your family.
Here are the steps to plow through to create a vacation responder:
1 Choose Settings ⇒ See all settings.Gmail opens the Settings page with the General tab displayed.
2 Scroll down until you come to the Out-of-Office AutoReply setting, which is near the bottom of the page.
3 Click the Out of Office AutoReply On radio button.
4 Use the First Day date picker to select the day you want to start sending the automatic replies.
5 (Optional) Select the Last Day check box and use the date picker to select the day you want to stop sending the automatic replies.If you don't choose the Last Day option, you'll need to remember to turn off the automatic replies manually by clicking the Out of Office AutoReply Off radio button.
6 Use the Subject text box to enter a Subject line for your automatic replies.
7 Use the large text box to compose the reply.Figure 2-14 shows an example.Feel free to spruce up your reply text with any of the formatting options that loom just above the text box.FIGURE 2-14: Use the Out-of-Office AutoReply setting to create a vacation responder.
8 If you want Gmail to respond only to messages from folks in your contacts list, select the Only Send a Response to People in My Contacts check box.
9 If you want Gmail to respond only to messages from folks in your company, select the Only Send a Response to People in Company check box (where Company is the name of the place where you work).
10 Click Save Changes.
Selecting messages
When you want to work with one or more messages in Gmail, you begin by selecting the message or messages you want to work with. Here are the techniques to use:
To select a single message, select the check box that appears to the left of the message.
To select multiple messages, select the check box beside each message.
To select all messages, select the Select check box (pointed out way back in Figure 2-1) or pull down the Select list and click All.
To select none of the messages, clear the Select check box or pull down the Select list and click None.
To select those messages that you have read, pull down the Select list and click Read.
To select those messages that you haven't read yet, pull down the Select list and click Unread.
To select those messages that have a star, pull down the Select list and click Starred.
To select those messages that have no star, pull down the Select list and click Unstarred.
Dealing with the Onslaught
Do you receive a lot of email? No, really, I mean do you receive a lot of email? I thought so. Welcome to life in the 21st century! Email is a massive part of everyone's life these days, but the in-your-faceness of email doesn't mean that you have to let email run your life. Gmail offers quite a few tools for making email manageable. No, Gmail can't reduce the sheer volume of messages you receive every day, but you can use some techniques and tricks to put email in its place.
Cleaning out your inbox
You probably don't want your messages gumming up your inbox forever, so Gmail gives you a fistful of ways to deal with the clutter. Select the message or messages you want to work with, and then click one of the following icons (see Figure 2-15):
Archive: Moves the message to the All Mail label. (To see this label, click More on Gmail's main menu — the one running down the left side of the screen — and then click All Mail.)
Report Spam: Moves the message to the Spam label. (To see this label, click More on Gmail's main menu and then click Spam.)
Delete: Moves the message to the Bin label. (To see this label, click More on Gmail's main menu and then click Bin.)
Move To: Moves the message to a label you specify. If the label doesn't exist yet, click Create New in the dialog box that appears. You can also drag the message from the inbox and drop it on another label on the main menu.
For more ways to get your Inbox squeaky clean, see “Muting a conversation” and “Snoozing a conversation” later in this chapter.
FIGURE 2-15: Commands you can run to move the selected message out of the inbox.
Labeling your messages
Earlier in this chapter, I talk about how Gmail eschews the usual email folders in favor of labels, which look and act very much like folders. However, labels are much more flexible than folders because you're free to apply multiple labels to any message. Whatever label you apply to a message, you can see that message and all the other messages that have the same label by clicking the label name on Gmail's main menu.
Gmail, bless its do-it-myself heart, often labels messages for you. For example, newly received messages automatically get the Inbox label, messages you're working on get the Drafts label, messages you've dispatched get the Sent label, and messages you've deleted get the Bin label. Gmail can also apply a label to an incoming message based on the sender, the subject, or the body. For example, a message from your boss or your G Suite administrator might get the Important label.