Gmail: Using the Star

That little star next to your emails in the inbox can be a useful tool.  It can remind you of things to follow up on.  It can also help you mark emails you don't want to lose track of.  With a little tweak to your settings, it can help you do a whole lot more.

The basic way to use the star to mark an email is to just click on the star.  That will make it turn yellow.

 Now when you click on the "Starred" section in the navigation down the left of your inbox screen, you will see all of the emails you have starred.  ​

To remove a star from an email, simply click the star icon again.  There are a few more options available for stars if you go into your settings.  Click on the gear icon at the top right of your inbox and choose "Settings".

​Now scroll down until you see the section for "Stars".

You can see that you have quite a few more options.  Chances are you have just one star in use.  If you click on the "4 stars" preset, it will look like this:

​You can also choose to use "all stars" or simply click on the ones you'd like to use and drag them into the "in use" section.

Once you decide what you'd like, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save changes".  If you chose to have more than one star, you can now click the little star icon for an email and it will be the yellow star, but if you click it again it will change and each click allows you to "scroll" through the star icons you have in play.  Once you set the icon and click away to something else, when you click the icon again it will remove the star from the email.

Stars can be a great way to add a layer of organization to your inbox.

Thanks for stopping by.  Come back again soon for more handy tech tips!

Gmail Inbox: Change The Spacing

Did you know you could change the spacing on your Gmail inbox?

You have three choices:

Comfortable - a good amount of space between emails
Cozy - in the middle
Compact - emails are tight together so you can see more on the page

You can change it with one easy step.

Click on the little gear icon on the upper right hand corner of your inbox and you will see all three options.  Click on the one you want.  I put all three options below so you can see the difference.  The default is comfortable, so you are probably already set to that one.

Comfortable

Cozy

Compact

You can pick whatever works best for your vision and your productivity.

Some Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts

I love keyboard shortcuts.  I wanted to share some of my favorites with you.  Some you might know, some you may not.  There are so many more, but these are the ones I use the most.  They are all listed for PC.  Unless otherwise noted, for a Mac - just replace Ctrl with Command.  (Select all would be Command-A instead of Ctrl-A)

Word Processing
Ctrl-A = select all
Ctrl-L = left align (ctrl-shift-L in Google Docs)
Ctrl-R = right align (ctrl-shift-R in Google Docs)
Ctrl-E = center (ctrl-shift-E in Google Docs)
Ctrl-C = copy
Ctrl-V = paste
Ctrl-Shift-V = paste using destination formatting - see post to explain.
Ctrl-X = cut
Ctrl-B = bold
Ctrl-I = italics
Ctrl-U = underline

Just for Google Docs
Ctrl-Alt-M = Make a comment (see post)  (Command-Option-M on Mac)

Just for Microsoft Word
Ctrl-1 = single space
Ctrl-2 = double space
Ctrl-5 = 1.5 space

Google Chrome
Ctrl-F = opens a search bar to find words on a webpage or Google Doc (see post)
Ctrl-Shift-D = save all your open tabs in a bookmark folder (see post)
Ctrl-Shift-B = toggles your bookmarks bar on and off

To Navigate - (see post about all of these)
Ctrl-Shift-T = opens the last tab you closed
Ctrl-T = open a new tab
Ctrl-W = close the active tab (the one you actively looking at)
Ctrl-Tab = switch to next tab to the right (same on Mac)
Ctrl-Shift-Tab = switch to the next tab to the left (same on Mac)
Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-8 = switch to that number tab
Ctrl-9 = takes you to the last tab you have open
Press Ctrl while you click on a link = open the link in a new tab
Press Ctrl-Shift while you click on a link = open the link in a new tab and take you to that tab

Enjoy!  Stop in again soon for more handy tips!