The New Gmail Tabs – Are They Necessary?

Last week Google unveiled a new feature called Gmail tabs that compartmentalizes your inbox.  There are those who find it to be a big help and those who wish Google did have this feature.  Personally I fall in the latter category.  I could not wait to remove the tabs and go back to the Gmail I am more familiar with.  Google tabs provide 5 categories Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums. I do not see the ability to add customized categories. You can use all 5 or some of them. While Gmail decides on its own which category an email message goes to, you do have the ability to override this.  If you do so you will be prompted to if you wish to make this a permanent change.

If you own a business and/or do business with people having a Gmail account you could be hurt by this. Communications to a customer may not immediately seen by them. Missed sales opportunities, lower customer satisfaction, foul ups in communication could result. What if your customer has your email going to a category that he or she looks at sporadically?  I suggest anyone potentially having an issue here mention to their customers, subscribers, etc that your email may be going to a tab that perhaps is a low priority for them. They should check to see what tab your email is going to and plan accordingly. I have heard of people having issues finding email as a result of this feature.

I disabled this feature as soon as it was made available by going to Settings, Configure Inbox and only enabling the “Primary” tab. This in effect disables the tabs.

 What I have been doing all along for my Gmail is to use the filters settings. This has come in handy especially since having I do not wish to get an email reminder for every message I get. For example, my messages from the LinkedIn groups I belong to go to a separate folder bypassing the inbox and I check them periodically.  I do not get an email reminder for them as they are not a priority. Selected messages are filtered to go to my inbox but are marked as read.  Again I am not reminded of an incoming message on my phone. I find the filter settings user friendly and easy to use. One hint here: If you get emails from people having the same ending email address and do not wish to receive email from anyone with that ending address, filter it by all email from @xyz.com instead of the full email address.  For example I have gotten email from people with an email address ending in @abc.com such as allyn@abc.com. If I choose to set a filter to delete emails coming from allyn@abc.com, emails coming from candy@abc.com will still get through unfiltered. Setting the filter to delete messages from @abc.com deletes both allyn, candy, and any other email address ending in abc.com.  I find it works like a charm and the filter feature has served me and others well.

While the Gmail tabs feature may work for some it does not work for quite a few.  It is easy to disable.  You be the judge of whether or not it works for you. Personally I find it to be overkill as the filters work very well for my needs.

If you want to know more about how you more efficiently use your Gmail or another email and have other technology needs I can be contacted at (917) 572-3468 or email me at mike@computerconciergeny.com .

Feel free to join the conversation and post comments and questions on my Facebook page at Computer Concierge NY LLC . There also are tips there to better use your computer, smartphone, iPad and other technology you may have or are thinking of buying.