This Is the Easiest Way to Filter Spam From Your Gmail Inbox.
No matter how diligently you respond to and archive all your emails , there will always be something that will prevent you from achieving true “inbox zero”: all those mailing lists you’re subscribed to. These nuisances will pop up at any time of day, making it difficult to find the truly important messages in your inbox—and the situation gets worse when you’re fed up enough to turn off push notifications, and they really start piling up.
It’s time to banish these annoying types. And if you use Gmail, it’s easy.
Use filters to manage emails from your mailing list in Gmail.
You can use a third-party add-on to view and unsubscribe from your mailing lists, saying goodbye to newsletters and emails. But you know what’s easier and cheaper? Setting up a filter in Gmail.
Open one of the emails from your mailing list and click the three dots in the menu bar. You’ll see ” Mark as unread ,” ” Mark as important ,” and a few other options, but the one you’re looking for is ” Filter messages like these .”
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A dialog box will then appear asking how you want to filter messages. You can filter by sender, recipients, and subject, as well as by anything that “contains the words….” In the ” contains the words …” line, enter “unsubscribe.”
Now, any email containing the word “unsubscribe”—and such emails are almost always found in trusted email lists —can be filtered from your inbox without any action on your part. After entering “unsubscribe,” click the ” Create Filter ” button. A dialog box will appear asking you how you want to filter these emails. You can choose to archive, mark as read, favorite, forward, or immediately delete.
What to Consider When Creating Gmail Filters
I recommend archiving messages rather than deleting them, in case you ever want to find them again. But if you’re sure you never want to open newsletters, newsletters, or promotional messages again, feel free to check the “delete” box. Keep in mind that if you choose to archive but later want to delete messages, you’ll have to do so manually. Personally, I’m happy to pay for Google’s extra storage to preserve my message records rather than accidentally lose something I care about, but I understand that’s unnecessary hassle.
If you do decide to archive these emails, the next step is to unsubscribe from the messages you truly don’t need. Gmail has made this process much easier: you can usually click the “Unsubscribe” button at the top of the unwanted email. This summer, Google also launched the “Manage Subscriptions” feature , so after reviewing your archive full of unwanted emails and noticing what you don’t need or don’t open, you can quickly and easily delete your subscriptions.