7 Features You Didn’t Know About in Gmail for Productivity

You likely use email daily to maintain relationships between customers and your team, Friends and family, In fact you probably spend more time in email than you do on any other platform or system that you use in your life or business.
Last updated: August 10, 2021

You likely use email daily to maintain relationships between customers and your team, Friends and family, In fact you probably spend more time in email than you do on any other platform or system that you use in your life or business.

There are many tools that email platforms use to help you write and send emails quickly. Some of them are not so obvious, and in this post, we’re going to tell you about seven Gmail features in Google Workspace that you can use to increase your productivity without having to pay for any extra tools or installing anything that slows your computer down.

If you want to learn more about all of these in more depth then check out the Gmail mastery course in the SixFive Academy.

Number 1: Smart Compose

Smart Compose is a feature in Gmail that helps you write emails faster with the click of the Tab key. Machine Learning powers Smart Compose and will offer you suggestions while you type so you can complete your sentences faster.

Many people are using the AI of Smart Compose to help them boost their productivity inside of Gmail. United Kingdom statistics show that in 2019, 66% of businesses believed email optimized response times.

Smart Compose learns how you write and will give you suggestions based on your writing style.

To power on Smart Compose on your computer, go to the top right corner and click Settings. In General you can scroll down to Smart Compose. From there you can select Writing suggestions on or Writing Suggestions off.

Number 2: Use Templates

Writing the same response to the same question either from a customer or someone on your team can get annoying. Thankfully, Gmail has a feature called Templates that you can use to answer common questions or for common emails that you send.

You can create up to 50 templates for your business or personal needs.

To create them, open your Gmail and Click on Compose. In the Compose window, enter the text that you want to act as the template. From there, Click More and then you can either save this as a new template or save it as an updated template for one you’ve already made.

Number 3: Snooze/ Reminders

Sometimes you get emails that you don’t want to deal with just yet.

You can use the Snooze feature in Gmail to temporarily remove certain mail from your inbox until you need it. You have the option to “snooze” these emails till next week or until the next evening if that’s what you need.

After you snooze an email, you can find it under Snoozed in your Menu. You can also edit the notifications you get for Snoozed emails and other emails, so you choose which mail will alert you, and which mail you want to check later.

To Snooze an email, just point to the email in your inbox and then on the right, click Snooze. From there, you can choose a later day to get the email.

Number 4: Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are fantastic short ways to control Gmail’s interface without moving your mouse. Make sure you turn on your keyboard shortcuts in your Advanced Settings.

While you type, you can use these shortcuts to change font size, Copy and Paste, and make fonts Bold or Italic just using your keyboard. There are even keyboard shortcuts you can use outside of composing that help you organize your inboxes.

Many of Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts are identical to the ones you’ll find in Microsoft Word or other word processors. Mastering them will allow you to write, edit, and send emails faster.

Number 5: Schedule Send

Let’s say you’re doing some work this weekend but you don’t want your team to know. If you have time to compose the emails you need but don’t want to send them until Monday—you can use Gmail’s schedule feature to schedule when you want the emails to go out.

Keep in mind that your email will send based on the time zone you scheduled them in.

To schedule an email, compose it first and then hit the dropdown arrow next to Send. From there, you can click to schedule when it sends. Gmail allows you to schedule up to 100 emails to your team or to your customers.

This feature is a great way to save time when you get to work the next week as the emails you need to send to your team are already on their way.

Number 6: Save Attachments to Drive in One Click

There are times you get files or other content from contacts that you want to save to one place quickly.

If you receive an email with an attachment, you can easily save it to your Drive and have it with you later in just one click. To save the attachment to Drive, hover over the thumbnail in the email message and then click Add to Drive.

From there, you will see the file saved in your Google Drive so you can use it later.

Number 7: Attach from Drive to Control Access and Ensure Fast Delivery

You can upload larger files to Google Drive with Gmail to send large files quickly. Sometimes the content you need to go out is too large for an email or will take a long time to upload.

To upload your file to Google Drive and then send it, start by hitting Compose in Gmail. After, click Google Drive and you can add the files that you want to upload and send. You can also customize the Sharing settings for the Google Drive so you control who can see the content you uploaded.

You can allow certain email addresses to view the content, or you can allow anyone who has the Google Drive link to view the content you sent.

Final Thoughts

Use these Gmail features to help you organize your emails and inbox. In a world of fast communication, these tools can help you relieve the stress of sending out and reading your emails so you can help your teams and help you customers more effectively. You will also help yourself by scheduling emails that you’ve written ahead of time and choosing when you want to view emails from other people.

Duncan Isaksen-Loxton

Educated as a web developer, with over 20 years of internet based work and experience, Duncan is a Google Workspace Certified Collaboration Engineer and a WordPress expert.
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