Labels in gMail

Most email applications let you set up folders for storing messages you want to save. You have to decide what category your message fits into, if you want to keep it (but not in the Inbox), make sure you have a folder with that name, and store the message there. Then, when you want the message, you have to remember what folder you saved it in.

gMail offers a different system where you label messages and, if you want to store them rather than leave them in the Inbox, you can archive them. The big difference is -

You can use as many labels as you want for one message!

Sometimes I only use one label, but often I use two or even three. “So what?” you ask. Well there are several ways I benefit from this attribute of gmail.

1. What I’ve just mentioned, – I can use multiple labels, so I don’t have to remember which folder I put a message in; I just have to remember one of the categories I’m likely to have labelled the message with.
2. I can create the labels I want for my own purposes by clicking on either “Manage labels” or “Create new label”.
   These will take me to Settings/Labels (or I can just go directly there) and I can manage my labels.
   It’s easy to add the labels that are useful for you, and if you have a lot of labels, you can choose which ones to hide or show.
3. Also, I can make the labels different colours, which helps me sort my messages visually.

   I simply click on the space beside the label and choose the colour. Easy.

4. To find messages again, whether in your Inbox or your gmail Archive (and gmail gives you LOTS of storage space), you can put a keyword or name from the message you want into the gmail Search field -
   or, and this is what I really, really love –  you can click directly on the label on the left, and all the messages with that label, whether in the Inbox or the Archive, will appear.
   

So that’s the story with gmail’s labels instead of other mail application’s folders. I find it way more convenient to organize my messages when I can add my own multiple labels and  archive messages, and then sort by colour and clicking on labels.

Give it a try; it will probably work for you too.

p.s. Thanks to Barry Sampson – http://barrysampson.com/ and Donna Papacosta – http://trafcom.com/ for their helpful comments on the previous post http://jnthweb.ca/2010/08/gmail-other-email-addresses/