Prioritize Me!

Not too long ago I ran across a half-serious half-mocking post about email addresses. Basically, you are very cool and tech-savvy if you have your own domain (like, nancy@nancyroberts.com).

Next best is a Gmail address.

After that come all the rest, but if you have an AOL address, you are over 50 or seriously un-techy, or both.

It took me a while to get used to Gmail. In the world of Outlook, you organize your email into folders. Yes, you can search, but primarily users get the idea: it's in the folder for that subject/client/event, and it came in roughly the middle of August. I go look.

In Gmail, the presumption is entirely that you will search for what you want. And to be perfectly honest, I'm not as happy with the search results as I might be. That aside, you learn to tag (or label) your emails (you can set up a rule that will label all emails coming from a particular person or address in a certain way). Then you can view only those emails (sort of like going into a folder), or you can search for a specific email by subject, sender, date - whatever.

Now Gmail has added "Priority Inbox," a feature allowing you to view your mails according to, well, according to priority. Tag any sender as priority, (you can continue to star your mail as well), then if you have priority mail turned on, those emails will be at the top of your list, no matter in what order they arrive in your inbox. That way, your attention is always directed to your most vital incoming mail.

To start working with this feature, go to "Settings" in the top right of your window, then select Priority Inbox from the menu than runs across the top of the resulting interface. Now you can select the settings you want for your priority inbox. They can always be adjusted going forward once you see how the feature is working for you.

And if you prefer to see your emails in the regular, "as arrived" way, you can toggle between "Inbox" and "Priority Inbox" by simply click the appropriate selection in the left-hand menu of your Gmail window.