Gmail Filters

       My Gmail account was in a big mess full of spam messages and Orkut messages. I was desperately looking for a way to filter out all the Internet job related spam emails that I have been receiving from multiple email addresses. Gmail Filters was the perfect solution for my problem.

What is a Gmail Filter

  A Filter is a condition/Set of Conditions that is configured based on which the emails are going to be filtered. And also gmail filters gives you the flexibilty to decide as to what needs to be done with those messages.

Following are the steps that I had followed to configure a filter.

Step 1:-  Identify the filter criteria. In my case I had to filter out all the messages that had the text "Internet workers" subject.

Step 2 :-  Go to Gmail --> Setings (top right corner of the main page)

Step 3:- In the Settings page go to Filters tab.

Step 4:-  Click on Create a New Filter.In the next page enter the criteria based on which the messages need to be filtered. In this case I have entered the text "Internet workers. Earn" in the "Has the words" section. Once this is entered, click on Test search to get the list of messages in Inbox that satisfy the filter criteria.

 

 Step 5:- Once the list of messages are displayed, click on Next Step to select the action to be performed with the messages filtered by Gmail filter.

Step 6: - In the next page we can choose the action to be performed on the filtered message. I am chosing to delete the message from Inbox. Please note that filter will be active for the messages that will be received after creating the Gmail filter. To apply the Gmail filter to the emails currently in the Inbox, select the checkbox that says "Also apply filter to xx conversations below" Click on Update filter.

Now the filter will be applied to all the messages that arrive in the Inbox.The Gmail filters are very similar to the Rules and Alerts feature in Microsoft Outlook. For more details on Gmail filters Visit the below links

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6579