How in the Tech

Enable Canned Responses for Quick Gmail Replies

By Adam Myers ⋅ October 22, 2008 ⋅

Gmail’s Labs, the testing ground for “not quite ready for prime time” functionality for Gmail, engineers have rolled out their latest feature – canned responses. If you are a heavy email user you’ve likely encountered a subset of mail that warrants the same response. If you’ve said it once, you’ve said it a hundred times is the common cliche. Whether it’s confirmation for the meeting or lunch with a friend, saving just a minute or two by having the appropriate response already in the can really starts to pay off over time. While this functionality is commonplace in Outlook and Thunderbird, I’m thankful to see the migration into the Gmail’s interface itself. Here’s how to get started.

1. From inside Gmail, click Settings from the upper right portion of the screen. Chose the Labs tab from the resulting page refresh.



2. You’ll see a multitude of functionality extensions to Gmail itself. Scroll down until you locate the option in question, Canned Response. Choose the Enable radio button before scrolling to the very bottom and Saving Changes.



3. Now when replying or composing a new message you will notice an addition drop-down available below the To or Subject fields.



4. To build up your set of canned responses, first compose a reply or new email with the content you wish to repeat ad nausea. Then, from the Canned responses drop-down, choose Save->New canned response... Name the response something intelligent for later recognition.
5. Now the next time the response warrants your canned response just chose it from the Canned responses drop-down. Canned responses are also able to be used with Filters to set up an intelligent auto-reply system.