Use Gmail to stop junk mail

Launch a web browser, go to the gmail's site and log in to your account in the normal way. Once logged in, click the Settings link (at the top right of the page) followed by Labs. If you are using Google Chrome, click the cog icon and then choose Labs from the dropdown menu. This displays a list of the experimental features offered by Gmail; the tools here are not guaranteed to work reliably in all situations. In the ‘Search for a lab’ box, begin typing smartlabels. The list is rationalised in real time, so you won’t need to type more than the first few letters to isolate the Smartlabels entry. When the Smartlabels entry appears, click the Enable radio button followed by Save Changes. Click Inbox to return to the list of incoming messages.

Smartlabels creates four new labels that it uses to sort incoming mail. All personal mail remains in the inbox, unlabelled (unless there is already a filter set up to apply a label). If Gmail’s Priority Inbox feature is enabled, ‘important’ messages will remain there. The new categories created by Smartlabels are: Bulk, Forums, Notes and Notifications. These labels are automatically applied to all matching messages in your inbox.

Click the Bulk link in the left-hand pane to see those messages classified under this heading. Typically, this will include mailing lists, marketing emails and circulars from clubs and societies; along with other mail that doesn’t require immediate attention. By default messages marked Bulk are archived, skipping an appearance in the inbox. To change this behaviour, click to remove the tick from the box labelled ‘Archive incoming Bulk (skip the inbox)’ at the top right of the message list. Unread messages continue to appear in bold and the number of unread messages in Bulk appears next to the Bulk label.

Now click the Notifications label link. Messages labelled as Notifications include calendar reminders, notifications from social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, bidding confirmations from Ebay and other general reminders. By default, Notifications remain in the inbox until archived manually. To have Notifications archived automatically, tick the box labelled ‘Archive incoming Notifications (skip the inbox)’. ▼

For their part, the Forums label is applied to messages from web discussion groups, while the Notes tag is given to personal reminders or memos (of the kind you might send to yourself). Smartlabels is pretty good at categorising emails but it does make mistakes and can sometimes neglect to label even obvious candidates. If a message turns up in the wrong place or it isn’t labelled when it should be, then it’s possible to report the fact to Google to help improve results. Reporting mail means giving Google permission to examine it closely, so avoid doing so with personal messages. Open the message, click the down-pointing arrow next to Reply and choose Report Miscategorisation from the dropdown menu.

This displays the Report Miscategorisation dialogue box. Choose the correct category from the dropdown menu; or choose None if no label is appropriate. When done, click the Report Miscategorisation button to confirm. Remember, though, that Google will have access to the full message body if reported in this way. This action won’t actually change the label automatically – so click the Labels button and select the correct one.