Readers’ Tips
Handy hints and tips from your fellow readers
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TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT
Choose different star colours for important emails
Over the years, I’ve got into the habit of ‘starring’ important emails in Gmail, so they stand out when I have more time to deal with them. I was frustrated that the only colour you can choose for a star is yellow – or so I thought.
Click the top-right Settings cog then ‘See all settings’ and make sure the General tab is selected. Now scroll down to the Stars section. You’ll probably see that the yellow star is the only one ‘in use’. Add more colours and symbols by dragging them from the
‘Not in use’ row – here (see screenshot) I’ve added a purple star and an exclamation mark – there are also ticks, arrows and question marks. Scroll to the bottom then click Save Changes.
Once done, you just need to keep clicking a star symbol next to an email to see the different options you chose. It’s a clever way of ranking the priority of emails. The ones I mark with an exclamation mark are most important.
Nigel Braine
Nigel wins a copy of our 2024 Back Issue CD
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BROWSERS
Press keyboard shortcut to see Chrome’s downloads
I’ve just learnt a keyboard shortcut for Chrome that would have saved me hundreds of clicks over the years if I had discovered it earlier. Pressing Ctrl+J opens the Downloads section of Chrome (see screenshot below), showing what you’ve downloaded recently. I always thought you had to click the three dots at the top right then click Downloads. I notice too that it works in Brave and Firefox.