20 Part I — Starting to Use Gmail
Moving on from the keyboard shortcuts, the next section shows you how you can
avoid them altogether by using filters.Plus Addressing and Filtering
One little-known feature of the more old school e-mail systems is the one called
plus addressing. It can be exceptionally useful both in Gmail and in your other
e-mail systems, and I use it extensively for things such as mailing lists and weblog
commenting.In a nutshell, Gmail ignores anything in the first half of an e-mail address after a
plus sign. So [email protected] treated
in exactly the same way as [email protected]. It is not, as you might
expect, a different address. You can put anything after the plus sign except for a
space or an at (@) sign, and it always gets delivered to your real Inbox. Figure 3-5
should prove that it works.FIGURE3-5: Plus addressing in actionPlus addressing is remarkably useful, as it enables you to set up filters for your
incoming mail. In order to do set up filters, click the “Create a filter” link to the
right of the search bar. You will be presented with a screen containing something
very much like Figure 3-6.