How to Create a Filter in Gmail

Quick and easy-to-follow guide for Gmail users

What are Gmail filters

If you are not sure what Gmail filters are, you should check out this quick 30 seconds introduction here.

How to create a Gmail filter step-by-step with images

Follow these steps to add an email filter to your Gmail settings.

Step 1

Open Gmail https://gmail.com and click the Settings gear icon in the top right.

Step 2

Select See all settings.

Step 3

Select Filters and Blocked Addresses on top.

Step 4

Then click Create a new filter.

Step 5

Choose what emails to apply your filter to

First, you have to set up the filter’s scope so that it only matches the emails you want to forward. Your filter will only work on whatever you specify here.

From: lets you specify sending email addresses.
To: lets you specify receiving email addresses.
Use: the Subject field to look for something in the subject.
Has the words: looks for content in the email.
Doesn’t have: excludes emails with specific content from the search.
Size lets you search for emails of a specific size.
Check Has attachment to only look for emails with attachments.
By default, the filter applies to chat messages and emails. Check Don’t include chats to exclude chat messages.

Click Create filter at the bottom to go to the next step, or click Search to see what existing emails in your mailbox fall within the scope of your filter.

Step 6

Choose what your filter does to emails

Every time an email falls within the scope of the filter settings in the previous image, you can choose to do one or more of these things automatically:

Skip the Inbox (Archive it)
Mark as read
Star it
Apply the label: – auto-applies a label
Forward it to: – adds an email to auto-forward to
Delete it
Never send it to spam
Send template: – automatically sends a canned response. Learn about templates here.
Always mark it as important
Never mark it as important
Categorize as: – adds a category
Also apply to x matching conversations – applies it to emails in your mailbox right now.