Gmail and Google Docs for multiple purposes?

March 30, 2017 1:44 AM

I am gradually using Gmail and Google Docs for more and more things: originally just my personal email, but over time some freelance work (Google Docs sent to that same address) that I would like to organize. But how? Folders? Filters?

My inbox is kind of a mess right now. In addition to my personal e-mail I'm getting work emails with links to Google Docs, which are mainly spreadsheet files for Sheets and documents for Docs. All files are kept on the Drive.

And to add to that, my other, main, job involves yet another Gmail account that I access (by switching accounts). That's essentially separate, but I use the Drive for both different jobs, and...it's all just really confusing.

What I'd like are places where all these separate jobs' things are separate and cut off from my personal email. And from each other.

I'm sure I could be explaining this better but I hope that at least some of you understand what I'm talking about. Any ideas would be great.

posted by zardoz to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Instead of simple account switching, one solution is to set up different Chrome instances associated to accounts, i.e. one chrome for work and one for personal. If you look at your settings and the People section, you can add accounts and then have different chromes for each. This enables, for example, different bookmarks, but real segregation of data. You can switch between them right at the top right of your browser window.
posted by idb at 6:16 AM on March 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

+1 for different Chrome profiles. Also, obvious but worth saying: I use Google Inbox on my mobile for my personal Gmail and another program (Outlook) for all of the work e-mail accounts. It might also be possible to use Google Inbox App and the Gmail App for different accounts on the same phone, but I'm not certain.
posted by LingeringMoon at 8:28 AM on March 30, 2017

Something I learned about way back when gmail was new, and which may or may not still exist: punctuation such as dots (.) and pluses (+) are ignored by the mail server. Practically, this means you can give different people different email addresses (e.g. first.last, first+last, firstlast) and they all go to the same inbox. I'm not sure if it's visible to you which address a given email was sent to, though.
posted by dbx at 12:45 PM on March 30, 2017

I'm not 100% clear on your setup, but you might want to use a filter to forward emails from your personal account to the work one. Then combine this with the separate Chromes.

In terms of transitioning the files, you can share the files to the work account, and then set it as the owner of those files (if that's appropriate).
posted by idb at 11:22 AM on March 31, 2017