Revolutionize the Way You Email: Learn How to Respond to a Specific Phrase in Gmail Like a Pro!

Emails are an essential part of our communication, both in personal and professional settings. However, it’s challenging to keep up with an overflowing inbox, especially when you receive hundreds (or even thousands) of emails daily. This is where Gmail’s advanced features come in handy, allowing you to filter messages and respond to them efficiently.

One of the features that Gmail users often overlook is the ability to respond to a specific phrase. Imagine you receive an email with a specific question or request that you need to reply to promptly. Instead of reading through the entire message, you can use Gmail’s search bar to find that specific phrase and respond accordingly.

Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1: Enable the “Canned Responses” feature The first step is to enable the “Canned Responses” feature in Gmail. This feature allows you to save frequently used responses and use them whenever you need them. To enable Canned Responses, go to “Settings,” click on the “Advanced” tab, and select “Enable” under the “Canned Responses (Templates)” option. Once you’ve enabled this feature, you can start creating your canned responses.

Step 2: Create your canned response To create your canned response, compose a new email in Gmail and write the response you want to save. Once you’ve created the response, click on the three vertical dots at the bottom-right corner of the email and select “Canned responses” > “New canned response” from the dropdown menu. Give your response a name and save it.

Step 3: Respond to a specific phrase in an email Now that you’ve enabled the “Canned Responses” feature and created your canned response, you can use it to respond to a specific phrase in an email. Here’s how:

  • Open the email you want to respond to.
  • Click on the magnifying glass icon in Gmail’s search bar.
  • Type in the specific phrase you’re looking for and hit enter.
  • Gmail will highlight the text in the email that contains the specific phrase you searched for.
  • Click on “Reply” or “Reply all” and type in any additional information you want to include in your response.
  • Click on the three vertical dots at the bottom-right corner of your email and select “Canned responses” > the name of your canned response.
  • Your canned response will be inserted into the email, and you can send your reply!

In conclusion, responding to a specific phrase in Gmail is a useful feature that can help you save time and respond to emails more efficiently. By enabling the “Canned Responses” feature, creating a canned response, and using Gmail’s search bar, you can easily and quickly respond to specific phrases in emails like a pro. So, start revolutionizing the way you email and make your inbox more manageable by using these advanced Gmail features today!

Gmail offers a really intuitive interface to easily exchange hundreds of emails. However, it can be a little difficult to pinpoint your reply in an email with loads of text. By default, Gmail will just put your reply at the end with the whole text quoted.

If you find this a little confusing in your conversations, then we have a solution for you. Gmail has a hidden feature that will let you quote a phrase from a conversation and reply directly to it. Let’s see how you can reply to a specific phrase in Gmail.

Note: this feature only works in Gmail and will not work on the smartphone apps.

Enable Quote selected text

Gmail comes with a “Labs” section where it has some experimental features that you can add to enhance your Gmail experience. Some of these features might graduate to become the main features in Gmail, while others will continue to be in the “Labs” section or be removed altogether. “Quote selected text” is one of these Labs features; when this feature is enabled, you can easily reply to a phrase just by highlighting it in a conversation. From my experience, it works fine without any negative impact.

To enable “Quote selected text,” click on “Settings” on the top-right corner of the window, and then click on “Settings” again in the menu.

In the Settings move tot the “Labs” tab, and scroll down until you see the feature “Quote selected text.” Click on the “Enable” button next to it, and then scroll further down and click on “Save changes.” Gmail will re-launch, and the feature will be enabled.

Replying to a Specific Phrase in Gmail

While you are in a conversation, highlight the text you would like to reply to, and then click on “Reply.” If you have highlighted text in the last response you have received, then click on the “Reply” button inside the bottom text box. However, if you have highlighted text in an older response, then you will have to click on the “upside down arrow” next to that email and select “Reply” from the menu (see the below screenshot).

The specific phrase you have selected will be quoted in the reply box, and you can write your reply below it. When you send the email, it will show the quoted text above and your reply below it.

While using the “”quote selected text” feature, if you experience any negative behavior, then disable this feature immediately. Also, let us know in the comments to help other users as well.

Good To Know: this feature is not only limited to Gmail for Web; you can also use this feature in other popular email clients like Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc. You don’t need to enable the “”quote selected text” feature either; it is enabled by default.

Conclusion

This is a very simple feature, but it will surely make things a lot less complicating and also save some time. You can also “quote” text manually by clicking on the “quote” button in the Gmail text editor and copying/pasting the text you would like to quote. This might be handy in quoting multiple phrases of text in the desired place, but it is not thesame as what we have explained above (no time/name stamps will be added). Do let us know in the comments if this was helpful to you.

Karrar is drenched in technology and always fiddles with new tech opportunities. He has a bad habit of calling technology “Killer”, and doesn’t feel bad about spending too much time in front of the PC. If he is not writing about technology, you will find him spending quality time with his little family.

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox