Gmail organization for a mail with a specific sender and subject

November 3, 2009 6:23 AM

Gmail question: How do I make a specific mail not group itself into the same thread over and over? Or how do I otherwise solve my minor annoyance?

Every day my mom scans me a crossword puzzle and emails it to my gmail account. It's always 'From:' the same person, and the 'Subject:' is always "FW: Attached".

Because of this, I guess Gmail's default behavior is to group these emails together, and sometimes we're replying to each other in these threads about the crossword puzzle or other stuff, and the result is a lot of mails in the same thread. Since I don't print the crossword until the end of the day it can be hard to find the one mail with the attachment. Further, if I don't Delete the mail completely that day, then it's hard to find the one that comes the next day, and so on.

I know Gmail has a lot of customization possible, but I'm not familiar with any of it. What's the best way to configure gmail so I can easily find my new crossword every day?

posted by poppo to technology (6 comments total)

You can create a filter for specific emails.

(1) Settings tab (top right).
(2) Filters tab.
(3) Create a new filter.
(4) Specify "From:" and/or "Subject:" fields.
(5) Specify what you want gmail to do with the email - for example, apply the label "crosswords" and archive it.

Voila!
posted by googly at 6:46 AM on November 3

I would set up a filter using "has:attachment" along with the from and the subject line, which would put all the emails with the crossword attachment under that filter. I've never used it as a filter, but the search comes from this advanced search FAQ and they say it can be used in a filter there.
posted by immlass at 6:48 AM on November 3

You can do this with a custom filter, I think. You can look for email

- from your mom
- subject FW: Attached
- click the "has attachment" box
- tag everything matching that criteris with ICANHAZCROSSWORD

I also use an add-on for Firefox called Better Gmail which will add a little attachment icon to messages that have attachments so you can pull it out of a thread.

That said the easiest way to do this might be social engineering where you reply to your mom and change the subject line which will automagically start a new thread with that subject line. At least this way you have a crossword at the end of every thread. What format is the crossword attachment in? If it's something you could import into Google docs, you could manage them that way and be out of your inbox entirely.
posted by jessamyn at 6:50 AM on November 3

jessamyn: "What format is the crossword attachment in? If it's something you could import into Google docs, you could manage them that way and be out of your inbox entirely."

If this is something you want to pursue, each Google account has a unique email address for sending documents into Google Docs by email. You could just give this email address to your mother. More info.

posted by sharkfu at 8:17 AM on November 3

Um -- it sounds like what you're asking is how to unthread a series of e-mails that have the same subject line, right? I was checking into that just the other day, and it looks like that's not actually possible in Gmail at this point. See here and here. I think the only solution is to change the subject line each time.
posted by Kat Allison at 12:28 PM on November 3

Yeah, I would go with Kat Allison - if you're starting a conversation about today's puzzle, always change the subject line (there's always an Edit Subject link in the header area) so it's in its own thread.
posted by timepiece at 3:00 PM on November 3