Get better control over you Gmail adress?

byHannaA

70 followers

Updated 7 years ago

Here comes a little tip, that recently was discovered :)

I recently discovered some little-known ways to use your Gmail address that can give you greater control over your inbox and save you some time and sometimes headache.
When you pick a Gmail adress, you actually get more than just "yourusername@gmail.com."

Down below, there are two ways you can modify your Gmail address and still get your mail to the correct place:

• Example 1:
  Add a plus ("+") sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email adress. For example, if your name was hannaa@gmail.com, you could send mail to hannaa+friends@gmail.com or hannaa+mailinglists@gmail.com.
  
  
• Example 2:
  The other way is that you Insert one or several dots (".") anywhere in your email adress. Gmail will not recognize periods as characters in adresses -- just ignore them. For example, you could tell people your adress was hannaa@gmail.com, hanna.a@gmail.com or ha.nn.aa.@gmail.com. ( there has been some confusion about this earlier, but let´s settle it once and for all, you can indeed receive mail at all the variations with dots.)
  

In my opinion, the amazing thing about being able to change and manipulate your email adress is that it makes it really easy to filter on those variants. You could, for example, use hannaa+bank@gmail.com when you ae signing up for online banking and then set up a filter to automatically star, archive or mark emails adressed to hannaa+bank. You can also use this when you register for a service and assume they will share your information, that you might not want. For example, I added "+donation" when I gave money to an organization once for a whiel ago, and now when I see emails from other groups to that adress, I know how they got it.

Solution: filtered to auto-delete.

Try it and you will notice it by yourself! :)