G! mail short cuts

Google, being at front in revolutionizing web 2.0 introduced keyboard shortcuts recently. Although it made the initial breakthrough, due to gmail's popularity quickly it died out. Here, we will look at how easy and quick they are in fact

Inbox

So when we are looking at our Gmail inbox, what are the shortcuts we need to remember to open our emails? Answer : J, K and enter.

K takes the black arrow to the newer email (upwards), J to the older (downwards) and enter opens the email. Just move the black arrow to the email you want to open then hit enter. Try it.

Message

Upon opening your email, you can then use your up and down arrow to scroll up and down through the email.

When you’ve finished reading the email, the next important shortcuts become : R to reply, F to forward, ! (shift and 1) to mark as spam, e to archive, s to star and #
to trash. There are MANY others but these are the most important ones
in my opinion. Memorise these first before you go learning any others.
Remember, the important ones first.

So when you’ve finished with an email, how do you get back to your inbox? Easy. Just press U. Now you’re back at home base. Easy isn’t it?

Want to send someone an email? Hit C to compose an email.

Labels

Now you want to go to another folder. This is where it gets interesting and it becomes a little like Google Desktop or Launchy. At the inbox, hit the letter G (obviously!) and that brings up this box :

If you then type the first letter of the folder / label you want to go to, it starts to give you options :

If it doesn’t offer you the correct folder the first time, just use
the up and down arrow to scroll through the folders until it gives you
the correct one. Then press enter twice to be taken to that folder.
Then as before, use J, K and enter to scroll up and down the list of
emails and enter them. Then U to go back to the label list then U again
to go back to the inbox. Just keep remembering that U always takes you
home and you’ll be fine.

To apply a label, just open the email by hitting enter then press L and that opens this box :

Then again, use the up and down arrow to find the correct label then
press enter to apply the label. Now press U to exit the email or e to archive it.

The only other two shortcuts that you should remember right off the bat are N & P if you have more than one new reply to a conversation. N takes you to the next New reply and P takes you the Previous reply.

As you can see, most of the shortcuts are pretty logical and if you
make an effort to learn them, it won’t be too long before they are
burnt into your brain and become second nature. But if you forget any
of them, just hitting the question mark key on your keyboard brings up
a black screen with the shortcuts for you to study. You can then get
rid of the screen by hitting the space bar.

Next time, I’ll be taking a look at the essential daily shortcuts
for Google Reader which will help you get through hundreds of RSS feeds
in a single swoop.

(Through) Makeuseof.com, (By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger and professional freelance writer. Check out his blog at BetterThanTherapy.net