DisSuggs4u

I have written many times before about how great the anti-spam feature of Gmail is. (12,064 today and counting, by the way.)

Today I wanted to share some tips that I have picked up which aid considerably with my Gmail usage: dot & plus addressing.

Gmail addresses are much like any other e-mail addresses out there and are in the format yourname@gmail.com. No surprises there. Where it gets interesting is that you can alter the e-mail address you give out to others (including web sites) and they are all delivered to the same mailbox in Gmail.

Dot Addressing

For example, to the outside world, yourname@gmail.com, your.name@gmail.com, and y.o.u.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com all look like different e-mail addresses. However, Gmail sees them belonging to the same mailbox. This is great because you can setup filters depending on which e-mail address you gave out to whom. Of course, this might get tricky if you actually reply to that e-mail unless you have it setup in Gmail as one of your multiple “from” addresses to choose from.

Plus Addressing

As an added treat, you can also use plus addressing in gmail. For instance, yourname+anystring@gmail.com as your e-mail address and Gmail will route it to your inbox. This works great for mailing lists and other nonsense that you subscribe to. This way, you can setup a filter where anything you receive which was sent to yourname+news@gmail.com gets automatically labeled “news.”