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Millions of people use Gmail, either for their business or for their personal email. Learning how to use keyboard shortcuts can save you hours of time in the long term as you “jump” from function to another. Who doesn’t want to save time? Let’s talk about how that works!
Not all shortcuts are helpful for everyone. I’m going to tell you about some shortcuts that I find useful. I will also tell you how you can find them for yourself and determine which ones will benefit you the most.
First, you must turn on Gmail shortcuts.
- Click the gear in the top-right corner and select “See All Settings.”
- Click the “General” tab and go down to “Keyboard shortcuts.”
- Click “Keyboard shortcuts on.”
- Be sure to click “Save changes” at the bottom of the page.
Now you can start testing them to see which ones would be most helpful to you.
- The most helpful shortcut is the cheat sheet! If you are unsure about a shortcut at any time, click Shift + ?. This will open a window with all the shortcuts available in Gmail. Very useful!
- If I need to search for a specific email (or emails), I press the / key to quickly move to the search function at the top of the page.
- Pressing Shift + 8 + u will select all unread messages. You can then act upon those messages as a group, such as moving them to archive using the next shortcut.
- To move emails that have been selected to archive, press e. This quickly moves everything that is not important to archive.
I hope these few Gmail shortcuts will give you an idea about what is available. There are many more shortcuts, some more valuable than others. Check them out and find which ones will benefit you. Using them will save you time which adds up in the long run!
Do you use shortcuts in Gmail? I’d love to hear which ones you find most useful.