Inventions to make life easier – Google – Gmail

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Gmail has, over the years, intelligently avoided the problem of folders by using labels.

However, there are usability issues that they haven’t addressed yet, and hence remain unsolved –

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1 – No way to sort mails since inbox is sorted by date of receipt (latest to oldest) by default

This means if I want to see all mails grouped by a Sender or Sender Email ID, I have to use Search to filter them out.

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2 – No summary of who is sending how many mails to you

Let’s face it – the 7.5 GB inbox has stopped us from thinking twice before cluttering it.

What we need now is a basic summary table – grouped by Sender, with a count of emails received from each Sender. This summary table should be cross-tabbed across Date/Week/Month/Year to allow for sharper understanding.

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3 – Filters only allow inputs towards

  • From
  • To
  • Subject
  • Has these words
  • Doesn’t have these words

 

Ideally, all permutations across the parts of an email and the Has/Doesn’t have strings should be covered, like this –

  • From – Has these words
  • From – Doesn’t have these words

 

 

  • To – Has these words
  • To – Doesn’t have these words

 

 

  • Subject – Has these words
  • Subject – Doesn’t have these words

 

 

  • Body – Has these words
  • Body – Doesn’t have these words

 

If possible, it should also have additional features like –

  • cc – Has these words
  • cc – Doesn’t have these words

 

 

  • Attachments – Has these words in filename
  • Attachments – Doesn’t have these words in filename

 

 

  • Attachments – Has these words in file content
  • Attachments – Doesn’t have these words in file content

 

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4 – Only one string input per box can be used while setting up a filter

This means that filters with multiple string inputs for a particular box will have to be set up separately.

At the first glance, that seems like a waste of time – however it might just be a more efficient easier-to-handle way of managing filters, which we will delve into later.
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