World Wide Crazy News!

You probably waste as much time sending email as you do reading it. Well, you're doing it wrong.

No matter who you are or what you do, there are some phrases that you just end up saying over and over again in emails. Like, “Please review the attached and get back to me” or “Thank you for your submission, I’ll review it and respond within 3 days” or “i h8 u ur writing sux.” Well there's a better, lazier way to do it.

You can use Gmail to save and insert phrases of any length into any email you want. Better yet, you can set up a filter to have Gmail automatically send these canned responses for you. This works especially well with plus-addressing. If you set up a filter to auto-reply to anything sent to me+submission@gmail, the email gets sent from me+canned.response@gmail. That means if they reply to you, they’ll be sending their reply to me+canned.response@gmail and not me+submission@gmail, which prevents them from then getting a second automated email from you. It’s the perfect way to create your own virtual secretary.

Odds are if you’ve been using Gmail for long enough you’ve probably stumbled onto Labs, Gmail’s workshop for new features. To start setting up your virtual secretary, first enable Canned Responses in Labs.

To set up a canned response, start by composing a new email. Write whatever you want your saved message to be in the body of the email, formatting it however you like. Once you have your response set up, click the Canned Response button to add a new one.

With filters, plus-addressing, and canned responses, we’re halfway towards a sentient inbox. And that's just the beginning of what Labs allows you to do.

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