Friday 12 July 2013

If it ain't broke... - how to mend the 'new' Gmail inbox

I'm not a big fan of change. I like order. I like things to be the same. No surprises. You get the picture. So you'll understand my dread when I log in to my Gmail account to be greeted with a 'welcome to your new inbox' message. Uh oh.

So is my dread justified? Absolutely. Don't get me wrong. I love Google. I love Gmail. It's generally a pretty smart, reliable and very user-friendly email platform. But why would I want to organise my inbox into different tabs? Why oh why Google? Why would you presume that I'm not efficient enough to want to filter through my own emails, by making a quick visual judgement based on sender name and subject line? (Isn't this what folders are for?) Am I really not clever enough to do that myself? Please! Give me a little credit.

There have been some awful changes to Gmail in the past, and as usual, there are some quick ways to revert back the changes.

So if you hate change like me, here's how to fix your Gmail inbox and make it good as new. Or at least as good as it used to be before Google decided that we needed help.

At the end of your lovely new tabs, there's a plus symbol. Click on this and you will see the window below.


Untick all tabs except 'Primary', then press save.

If, for some unknown reason, you want to reinstall the tabs, you can get back to this window by clicking on the cog symbol in the top right, then selecting 'configure inbox'.

 I hope that helps!

And relax... order is restored.

2 comments: