This is a quick tutorial that shows how to apply filters to your inbox to stop receiving emails from an email address while not out rightly deleting the messages. In this case the filter will send and email to the sender notifying them of the block. This is an alternative to the block email functionality of Gmail which only sends mails to the Spam folder. The big advantage is that the sender is notified of the block, hopefully discouraging them from mailing you again.
Step 1:
First you need to enable templates in your Gmail settings. Click on the gear icon in the top right to open settings. If necessary click the “See all settings” link to go to the full settings.
Go to the Advanced settings and enable templates:
Step 2:
Go back to your inbox and compose a new blank email. Add a subject and body which will be the message sent to your blocked sender.
Click on the more options button to the right of the send button and click on Templates->Save draft as template->Save as new template. Give it an appropriate name.
Step 3:
Go back to the Gmail settings and go to the ‘Filters and blocked addresses’ tab. If you’ve never set up a filter it will be a bit empty. Click on ‘Create a new filter’.
In the form that pops up enter the email address you want to block in the ‘From’ field. The other fields you can leave unless there are any other criteria you want to apply.
Click ‘Create filter’. In the next form select ‘Skip the inbox’ and ‘Send template’ checkboxes. For the send template setting choose the template you just made.
Click the ‘Create filter’ button and you are done. Mails from the ‘blocked’ email address will go straight to your archive and the sender will get the ‘blocked’ email template.
I also use the ‘Apply the label’ setting to mark the email if I ever need to find them, for legal reasons or whatever.
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