Users can enable or disable each new feature in Labs

Google is experimenting at a furious pace. Its most popular product, Gmail, has gone back to the lab for further improvements even before most of you could discover its fantastic hidden features. Here are some little-known features that will help to keep your inbox clutter free.

Skip inbox: This is a great way to filter your incoming messages. Click on Settings and then on Filter. At the bottom you will find ‘Create a new Filter’. Say, you want all your Facebook messages to be organised outside your Inbox. So, under ‘From’ put in Facebook and go to the next step. Tick ‘Skip the Inbox (Archive it)’. Next, tick ‘Apply Label’ and create a new label called Facebook. Finally, click on ‘Create Filter’ and apply it to all the previous emails you have received from Facebook. The next time you open your inbox, you will find all your messages from Facebook under Labels.

Labels is a very useful way to quickly get to mails that you regularly receive from certain friends or organisations. You will find the Labels tab under Settings.

Manage multiple accounts: Did you know you could use Gmail to send messages from your other email addresses? You do not have to leave Gmail and go to Yahoo mail, for instance, to send a message from there. You can do it from Gmail itself. This feature makes it easier to manage multiple accounts from the Gmail interface.

Click Settings along the top of any page, and open the ‘Accounts’ tab. Under ‘Send mail as’, click ‘Add another email address’. In the ‘Name’ field, enter your full name. In the ‘Email address’ field, enter the mail address you would like to send from.

When someone replies to your message using a custom ‘From:’ address, the reply will be delivered to the ‘From:’ address rather than your Gmail address. If you want replies to be delivered to Gmail or a third account, you will need to enter a ‘reply-to’ address. To do this, click ‘Specify a different reply-to address’ and enter the desired email address.

Click Next Step and then click Send Verification. Gmail will send a verification message to your other email address to confirm that you own it.

Open your other account and either click the link in the message Gmail sent or enter the confirmation code in the Accounts section of your Gmail settings.

POP3 Messages: To be able to receive your mails from Gmail in Outlook or Outlook Express, you will have to enable this by going to Settings and clicking on ‘Forwarding POP/IMAP’. Enable the relevant parts. You will find the Outlook and Outlook Express configuration instructions on this page too.

What is in the Lab? When you log in to your Gmail account, you will see a blue icon. Click on it. Among the new features introduced are:

• A quick-link tool that lets you bookmark specific Gmail messages. It adds a box to the left column that gives you one-click access to anything that you have bookmarked in Gmail. You can also use it for saving searches and important messages.

• You could always put a star on a mail, but now you can insert Superstars, by successive clicks of the mouse.

• The “e-mail addict” tool that lets you lock yourself out of your email account for 15 minutes.

• A fixed-width font option view adds a dropdown menu that lets you view a message in a fixed width font.

• Mouse gestures that let you take actions based on mouse movements. However, this works best in Windows. Don’t try it on a Mac.

• A ‘Signature tweak’ and a ‘Quoted signature’. The first lets you put a signature above the quoted reply and the second puts quotations at random. However, you cannot use both at the same time

• The option to upload your picture so that people can see who they are chatting with.

If you encounter any problems with your account while using labs there is an escape hatch — type in http://mail.google.com/ mail/?labs=0

Corrigendum: Last week’s headline should have been ‘Email with POP3’ instead of ‘Email without POP3’. The error is regretted.

Send in your computer- related problems to askdoss@abpmail.com. The solutions will appear soon.