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If you find yourself sending the same email message to people repeatedly, you may wish you had a magic wand you could wave to send replies easily. Good news! Gmail Canned Response can be your magic wand. You can save yourself a lot of time and keystrokes by creating Canned Responses to frequent emails you get.
With Gmail Canned Response you don’t have to type the same response over and over and over again. Type it once and then access it any time you need it, saving yourself a lot of time and unnecessary effort. With just a few clicks you can send out email responses such as reminders, thank you messages, polite refusals, notices and other frequent messages.
How to Enable Gmail Canned Response
To use Gmail Canned Response you need to first activate it:
- Click the gear icon in Gmail
- Choose Settings from the drop-down menu
- Click Labs in the menu bar. You’ll see a list of tools you can use with Gmail, including Canned Responses.
- Click Enable to begin using Canned Responses
- Scroll to the bottom and click the Save Changes button
How to Create a Gmail Canned Response
Next you need to create some Canned Responses. Think of the emails you get often from people where you feel as if you’re typing the same message too many times.
To create a Canned Response, click on Reply to an email you want to respond to with a message you’ll use as a Canned Response in the future. Start typing your response into the text area of your reply email. You can also paste text if you have a previous response you want to use.
Write the response you want to use as your template. You can use blanks if you need to include [—names—], [—dates—] or any other information to make your response look personal. If you have an automatic signature, such as WiseStamp, don’t include that or else it will be entered twice.
[note] See, Dress Your Email for Success with WiseStamp! to learn how to add custom signatures to your email automatically. [/note]
Click the down arrow ∨ at the bottom of the message, next to the trash can:
Click Canned responses in the drop-down menu, then click New canned response.
You’ll be asked to give your new Canned Response a title. Google suggests the subject line as a title but you may want to be a bit more descriptive. Type in the title of the Canned Response and click OK.
Congratulations! You’ve just created your first Canned Response!
Using a Canned Response
Next time you get an email where you want to use your Canned Response, click Reply, then click the down arrow ∨ next to the trash can. Click Canned Response. Choose the title of your Canned Response under the Insert heading.
Voilà! Your Canned Response will appear in the text of the email.
Editing your Canned Response
If you decide your Canned Response needs some tweaking, you can edit it without having to start from scratch. Make your changes, click the down arrow ∨, choose Canned Response, then click the title of your Canned Response under the Save heading.
You’ll see a warning message asking you to confirm that you wish to overwrite your Canned Response. Click OK. Your edited Canned Response will be saved.
Deleting a Canned Response
If you find you don’t want to use a Canned Response any more, click Reply in any email. Click the the down arrow ∨, choose Canned Response, then click the title of your Canned Response under the Delete heading.
You’ll get a pop-up confirming your request to delete. Click OK and your Canned Response will be deleted.
Ideas for Using Canned Responses
You can use Canned Responses to:
- Give people directions to your office, home or other location
- Answer frequently asked questions (for example, bloggers can use this for advertisements, guest post inquiries, etc.)
- Share favorite recipes, links to websites, book recommendations, fitness tips
- Thank people for congratulating you for winning the Nobel Prize, a gold medal in the Olympics, the Powerball Lottery, etc.
- Direct press inquiries/contract offers to your agent
✪ Be sure to check out Gmail Undo Send – Saving You from Your Mistakes in case you quickly regret sending out your Canned Response!
Your Thoughts
Have you ever had to respond to multiple emails saying the same thing? Did you ever wish you could wave a magic wand to reply automatically? Have you ever used Canned Response? When would you use Canned Responses? Let us know in the Comments section below!
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* Gmail icon (edited) courtesy of AJ Cann via Flickr and Creative Commons
Hi Carolyn,
I can see this would be useful, but not for me. I don’t write many emails, I read lots of them! I’ve been shopping with my Chinese house guest. I think we will have to go again, she still has to buy gifts for family back home. Usually I spend lots of time thinking about what I will write, but now I have to think about other things! She wants to cook chicken wings in Coca Cola later. It’s very nice, she says!
You might have notice has tags in my titles, good because they are automatically tweeted, but they can make the title Google unfriendly if they are too long; I’m told!
Hi Mike, Yes, you need to send emails often to have Canned Responses be a valuable tool for you. I’m thinking as word continues to spread about your photography, you may someday need Canned Responses to field all of the offers you’ll be getting for your shoots!
I’m not a big fan of hashtags in titles. Readers can add them if they are tweeting your articles. Google seems to find plenty of articles without any hashtags in the titles!
The information provided was extremely useful and informative. Thanks a lot for useful stuff.
Hi Sandesh, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m so glad you found this helpful. I hope you enjoy using Gmail Canned Response!
Hi Carolyn,
I’ve used Phrase Express in the past, to type in repetitive text messages and replies. But it was a resource hog. So, what I use now is an old but quick and light app from Adam Pash of Lifehacker. It’s called Texter. Both of these are tray apps.
I haven’t yet used GMail’s canned response, but then, GMail isn’t my main e-mail. I use a paid e-mail service. They have notes I can save and insert into new e-mail messages with a click. Similar to canned responses but much more useful.
But anyway, I’ll give this canned response in GMail. Thanks for the post. Useful list of ideas for using canned responses.
I use canned responses to send replies to people on LinkedIn who send me the default invite. I ask them why they want to connect with me. The ones who reply, I connect with them. Most people ignore it though, so I don’t connect with them. I also have a canned response, to which I add and personalize the message later, for birthdays on LinkedIn.
Hi Raspal, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’ve heard of Texter before but never tried it. That would be very handy for times where you have to type text repeatedly and you aren’t in Gmail. I used to write macros in DOS (back in the Stone Age) that saved me a lot of time in my job.
I like your ideas for using Canned Responses. Yes, when you get invitations to connect on LinkedIn you may not realize who the person is because you’ve forgotten them or because they’re a complete stranger. Great idea to reach out to try to make the connection. If they don’t reply then you’re right not to accept their invitation to connect.
Thanks for sharing your valuable insights with us, Raspal!
Yep, I remember macros in DOS. Used to love all the commands. Remember the command, “doskey”? I’m a command-line guy. Still love to use Linux.
Back at work, many years ago, I had only Linux as my OS. I had no Windows at all.
Yes, I used computers before Windows and it was generally much more challenging. I do remember that command, Raspal, Great to meet a fellow DOS fan. I still miss DOS, though today’s tech is easier. There’s something very satisfying about typing a command and having it just happen.
Hey Carolyn,
I was in a hurry the other day so didn’t comment at that time that I stopped by to read this.
Normally these types of responses come from my main blog email address and I only use gmail for a few things. For those messages I actually have them written and pasted in a text file. As you can imagine, the majority of them are wanting to guest post for me so I have my normal blurb that I respond to them with.
This is good to know though and I might use this feature. Gmail is always adding some cool things.
Thanks for sharing this with us, like this addition.
Enjoy your weekend.
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne, Yes, by setting up Canned Responses you can save yourself quite a few steps instead of copying and pasting text from your file. Just create your Canned Responses, you can even copy the ones you already have, then access them right from Gmail without having to open your files.
I use Canned Responses for guest post requests where the sender clearly has no clue about The Wonder of Tech. They don’t use my name or any identifying information and offer me guest posts on topics other than tech.
Canned Responses aren’t a new feature of Gmail, but I try to share the best tech here, new or not! Sometimes tech that’s been around for a while is still the best but not everyone knows about it. So many people are trying to learn about the latest tech, but tech doesn’t have to be cutting edge to be useful.
Thanks for taking the time to come back and share your thoughts with us, Adrienne. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead!