Organizations are moving away from desktop clients like Microsoft Outlook to web applications such as Gmail and Google G Suite For Businesses. And, the number one question I receive from ex-Outlook users is, “How do I keep my current workflow from Outlook in Gmail?”
In this tech tip, I share how to tweak Gmail for work. These four changes make Gmail easier to use for professionals, especially those switching from Microsoft Outlook.
Would you prefer a video version of this article? Click here: http://technoju.do/hfX0F
Tweak 1: Disable Categories
Google has added a feature to Gmail that aims to reduce the clutter in your Inbox called Categories. It achieves this by establishing separate tabs for specific categories such as Social and Promotions. As email arrives, Google attempts to detect which messages belong to a particular category. For example, email from sites such as Facebook or Twitter would go to the Social category and newsletters would go to Promotions. This could be potentially useful for personal accounts, but for business accounts this can be dangerous. What if the algorithm gets it wrong and moves an important or time-sensitive email out of your inbox into one of these categories? To avoid this scenario, disable categories so that all messages appear in the inbox, allowing you to determine how best to sort it.
How To Disable Categories:
1. Click on the Settings icon 
(Gear)
2. Select “Configure inbox” from the drop-down
3. Uncheck all boxes except “Primary”
4. Click the “Save” button.
Tweak 2: Turn off Conversation View
Conversation View is another feature of Gmail intended to combat inbox clutter. It attempts to group emails by subject line. As emails arrive, they are added to a group or conversation that can be expanded rather than as individual messages that are listed in the order they arrived. Presumably, the thinking is that messages are best viewed in the context of the entire conversation. But, have you ever received replies that are completely off-topic and have nothing to do with the original email? Yeah, me too. So, not all messages with the same subject line are necessarily about the same subject and may need to be addressed separately.
How To Disable Conversation View:
1. Click on the Settings icon (Gear)
2. Select “Settings” from the drop-down
3. Select the “General” tab under Settings.
4. Scroll down to the section labeled: “Conversation View”
5. Click the radio button next to “Conversation view off”
6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Save Changes” button
Tweak 3: Turn on Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts saves times by allowing you to perform actions on an email with a single key press. A few good examples of convenient keyboard shortcuts are:
- Pressing the “E” key to archive an email and remove it from the Inbox view.
- Pressing the “L” key to apply a label (which is similar to moving it to a folder, except labels allow messages to be in multiple folders without having to duplicate the email).
- Pressing the “!” key to mark an email as Spam and send it to the Spam folder immediately.
How To Turn On Keyboard Shortcuts:
1. Click on the Settings icon (Gear)
2. Select “Settings” from the drop-down
3. Select the “General” tab under Settings.
4. Scroll down to the section labeled: “Keyboard shortcuts”
5. Click the radio button next to “Keyboard shortcuts on”
6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Save Changes” button
Tweak 4: Turn on Preview Pane
By default, Gmail displays an email list and individual emails must be opened to view its contents. Under this default view, you can either see the list of emails or an email’s contents, but not both. Users switching from Microsoft Outlook may be accustom to a view of the inbox that is a split window, with a list of emails on the left and a preview pane on the right. This view allowed users to see to both the list of emails and the contents of a selected email at the same time.
How To Turn On Preview Pane
1. Click on the Settings icon (Gear)
2. Select “Settings” from the drop-down
3. Select the “Advanced” tab under Settings.
4. Scroll down to the section labeled: “Preview Pane”
5. Click the radio button next to “Enable”
6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Save Changes” button
7. Active the Preview Pane by clicking on the Toggle split pane mode icon 
8. The preview pane should appear as below:
9. Done.
Gmail is a useful tool out of the box but a lot of its features are geared toward personal use and make a lot of decisions on behalf of the user.
Business users need complete control over how their email is processed. These four tweaks put the power of Gmail back in your hands by disabling default settings that limit our control and by enabling features that are truly useful for business.
