Get a Reminder to Follow-up your Starred E-mails in Gmail

If an important email arrives in your Gmail mailbox and you are unable to respond right away, you "Star" that message. These Stars (or Flags in Outlook) help us in remembering messages that need to be acted upon later else they are likely to get lost in the sea of incoming emails. →

The problem is, unless you are regularly pruning the list, your Starred folder in Gmail may become just another dumping ground for emails that require follow-up.

Setting a Reminder for Pending E-mails

What I have done is created an email newsletter that arrives every morning and contains a list of 10 messages, picked randomly from the entire pool of messages that are marked with a star in Gmail.

This daily email works like a gentle nudge to act and also alerts me of messages that have been pending for too long. Here’s how you can set up one for your own Gmail account.

1. Copy this Google Sheet to your Google Drive.
2. Open the sheet and a new Gmail option will appear in the menu bar. Choose Initialize and grant access.
3. Now choose Gmail -> Install to activate the script that will send you a daily newsletter. Close the Google sheet.

If you wish to stop receiving the email reminder anytime, open the same Google Sheet and choose Uninstall from the Gmail menu.

Related reading: Create Email Reminders Quickly

Also, the Google Script will send you a summary of 10 messages from your Starred folder. You can however change the values of cell D5 and D7 in the sheet to monitor another label or change the count of messages that should be included in your daily digest.

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