We’re all Gmail users here at BA and I know we’ve all ended up with an inbox so full of email we sometimes have trouble finding the message we want quickly. Google understands this and is always trying to help us organize our endless streams of email. One of their biggest features is called the “Tabbed Mailbox”. To put it simply, instead of having one place where all your email shows up, they’ve broken that up into four distinct “tabs” to automatically sort your incoming mail. I’ll tell you how to turn this on or off a little later in the post. However, when you do log into a tabbed gmail account you’ll see four standard “tabs” at the top of your inbox.

Gmail Tabs

Here’s what they are and what they do:

Primary: The primary “tab” will show you any email from Brewster community members as well as any messages that don’t end up in the other “tabs”

Social: This tab has any email message sent from a social site. For example, Facebook updates, twitter messages and other social media related email.

Promotions: Email that google can identify as promotions and offers from companies and vendors should end up here.

Updates(Not on by default): Emails about confirmations (think airline tickets), bills and other official statements should end up here.

Forums (Not on by default): Lists any messages or responses from online groups, discussion boards and mailing lists.  If you turn this on, all messages to BA groups, like Academy Personnel, Team, etc. will end up here.

Google’s provided a small video showing off these features and how they should work. https://youtu.be/CFf7dlewJus

To turn the Tabs feature on follow these steps:

  • Log into Gmail!
  • Click the “Gear” icon in the upper right side of your mailbox and choose “Configure Inbox”

Screenshot 2016-01-15 12.07.42

  • You will be presented with the following window:

Screenshot 2016-01-15 12.14.41

  • Select the “tabs” you wish to use and hit save. That’s it!

Want to “un-install” the tabbed interface? Go back to the “Configure Inbox” link as you did in the first step above and uncheck all the checkbox’s EXCEPT for “Primary”

Googles’s Tabbed Inbox Official Support Page