I have a Gmail account that I use to login to Google properties such as Google Docs.  Gmail  is not  my primary email  account.  I’ve started using it more;  for LBJ class reunion stuff for example.   I’ve used it quite a bit as a “throwaway” email when sites ask for an email address but I don’t want to give them my personal email.  I highly recommend it to anyone as either a primary or secondary address.  There are  two main things I like about  Gmail that I think everyone should take advantage of.

1.  Have Google forward all mail to your primary address.  That way you don’t ever have to login to Gmail and for all  practical purposes, you can use your primary mail to receive and reply to people using your Gmail account.  Of course if you  don’t want people knowing your primary account, they you would login to Gmail  and respond from there.  Setup forwarding by clicking Settings in the upper right corner…select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP  tab…Select forward a copy of incoming mail  to…enter your primary email address…choose what to do with the mail that arrives in your Gmail  account.

2. Take advantage of a little known feature that allows you to create NEW email addresses on the fly!  My email address is alankley@gmail.com.  I can give out alankley+facebook@gmail.com, alankley+anything@gmail.com and those email addresses will be delivered to my Gmail mailbox.  I’ve created quite a few like that when I’m asked for an email address. That way I can turn them off if I start receiving spam or I can setup filters to file them away or forward them.  Not all websites accept an email  with a ‘+’ in it but many do.  Here is the Google Help page on the subject:  Using an Address Alias

If you are concerned about the safety of your information using Google Gmail and Docs, I wrote this post on what I think of that.

Update: 10/11/2019

To help cleanup your GMail account here are some search options you can use to list older emails you can delete, or locate emails with attachments:

before: 2019/01/01
larger: 1m
has:attachment larger:5MB

Find the full list here.

Locate unread emails from primary inbox: “category:primary is:unread”