I have long used my InBox on any email system I’ve had access to as my “to do list”; if there’s an old email in my InBox it means I have to do something … maybe you’re the same. However, when there’s emails flooding in from all over the place the “to do” messages can get lost amongst the noise.

How’s this for a solution for all GMail users?

1. Turn on the following in Labs (Settings / Labs tab)
   note: your Google Apps administrator may have turned off Labs
   • Superstars
   • Multiple InBoxes
2. Click on Settings / Multiple Inboxes tab
3. Enter “has: red-bang” and give it a name of “ToDo”
4. Return to your InBox (or labels) and star the “ToDo” items with the red “bang/!”
5. Voila

You can use any type of star, to find the name of each star type go to Settings / General tab and hover over each star to get its name

Don’t forget you can set up “InBoxes” containing any type of mail search – show me all the emails from Client X, marked with a yellow star containing an attachment – check out the complete list of GMail search options

And finally, you don’t have to go back to the InBox to get to your ToDo list, it’s merely a search! From the search box you can easily enter “has:red-bang” and push ‘Search mail’ and there’s your ToDo list.

This post was totally inspired by James T from Google, thanks

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