Quick and Dirty Notes in Gmail

For a long time I have been looking for a good application to store my notes. I used a neat Mac application by the name of MyNotes to keep track of my notes. I still think its a very good application, but the only shortcoming of this application is that it does not support Google Search :) Let me tell you this is not a bad thing.

I was hanging out with a friend from Yahoo today evening, and decided to publish some of my Google Hacks :) So here is one of them. This is a quick and dirty way to store notes with Google.

Most email providers provide a feature to create aliases using the + sign. So if your email address is john.doe@gmail.com all mail sent to john.doe+office@gmail.com will also land in your mail box. This is not a new feature, but some providers have issues with it for some reason.

1. Create a new contact. Enter the following information.

Name: Notes
Primary Email: john.doe+notes@gmail.com

2. Create a new label called "Notes"
3. Create a new filter. Enter the following information.

From: john.doe+notes@gmail.com

4. Click on the "next step button"
5. Select "Skip the Inbox (Archive it)" and "Apply the label Notes"

Now when ever you send a email to Notes, it will be archived and stored. You can access it using the Notes label.

You can search for notes by doing the following: Your Search Terms label:Notes

If you are using POP to access your mail, a copy is download to your computer. You can then just create a normal mail filter to place any mails that have "To: john.doe+notes@gmail.com" moved to the Notes folder on your local system.

The only down side is that you can not edit a note. But you can create follow up notes using the reply field.