Getting Organized with Gmail Labels

Google's mail application, Gmail, has been available to the public for quite some time now and is widely used. As opposed to other common email applications, such as Microsoft's Outlook, Gmail does not use a folder-based organization system for emails. Instead, it keeps your emails connected by conversations and allows you to organize them by labels. I am always surprised when I learn that someone is not using labels at all. For me, my label set-up makes my email much more accessible and easier to find a particular email quickly.

Creation

At the top of your Gmail inbox, you see the tool bar with six buttons including: Archive, Report Spam, Delete, Move to, Labels and More actions.

Click the Labels button, this is a drop down. Now click "Manage labels" if you do not already have any labels set-up. You will be taken to the Labels tab of your Gmail settings. At the bottom of the page, you will see that you can create a new label. Let's create one that we can use to quick reference all of our online orders. I will call it "Shopping". Once you click "create", the "Shopping" label has been added to your label list. Now, how to use it...

Application

Go back to your "Inbox" and click the check-box next to the very first email in your inbox (this will highlight the email yellow). It does not matter what the email is. Once you have placed a check mark next to the email, go back up to your "Labels" button and click the check box next to "Shopping". Click "Apply" at the bottom of the drop-down window. Now you will see a little tag that says "Shopping" next to the subject of your email. I bet you're saying to yourself, "that's great but why would I want to do this?"

Why You Want To Do This

On the left-hand side of your gmail, you will see a couple different blocks, the second one should be your "Labels" box. As you can see, I have many labels. You probably only have "Shopping" in this list. Okay, so the point of using labels is to be able to have an empty inbox. "Impossible," you say? Check this out. In your inbox, make sure a check-mark is next to the email you already labeled with "Shopping." Now click the "Archive" button in the top tool bar. You'll see that your email disappeared from the inbox. Now, go over to your "Labels" box and click the "Shopping" link. Now you're looking at every email you have that has the label of "Shopping." This means that you can still easily find this email without it cluttering your inbox!

Label Removal

"That's great Leslie, but this email has nothing to do with shopping" No problem! There are two ways to remove a label from an email:

1) Make sure a check-mark is next to the email you want to remove the label from. Go to the tool bar and click the "Remove Label 'Shopping'" button.

2) Click on the email you want to remove the label from so you can read the body. Next to the subject of the email, the labels attached to the email will be listed. In this case, you can see "Shopping" next to the subject. Click the "X" next to the label to remove it from the email.

Regardless of how you remove the label, this image will appear above your emails. It is notifying you that the label has been removed from the email. If you did this by accident, simply click "Undo" and Gmail will put the "Shopping" label back on the email for you. If you're wondering where the email went when you removed the label, just click back to your "Inbox" and you'll see the email there.

It's Automatic

Now that you're beginning to see how useful labels can be, you're probably thinking that it will be tedious to label every single email that comes through your inbox. Lucky for you, Gmail created "Filters".

Go back to your inbox and put a check-mark next to any email. Go up to the tool bar and click the drop down menu for "More Actions", then click "Filter messages like these." You will be taken to the "Filters" tab of your "Settings." 1) The first step to making a filter is to input various pieces of criteria that Gmail will search on every time an email comes into your inbox. I am going to filter on the "From" line, where the email address is "digital-no-reply@amazon.com." Click the "Next step" button. 2) Choose what you would like Gmail to do with the email once it is received. You have the following options (you can choose as many as you want):

Skip the Inbox (Archive it): The message will not appear in the inbox.
Mark as read: The message will appear in your inbox but as if it has been already read.
Star it: Marks a star next to the message in your inbox.
Apply the label: This is the one we are most interested in. You can choose which label to mark all received emails based on the previous criteria. So your label will be applied automatically to the email, without you having to manually set it.
Forward it to: The message will be automatically forwarded to a specific address and not appear in the inbox.
Delete it: The email will automatically be put in your trash folder and not appear in the inbox.
Never send it to Spam: The email will never be marked as Spam.

I am going to put a check-mark next to "Skip the inbox" and "Apply the label" and I will choose the label "Shopping". If you already have messages with this criteria in your mail, you might want to click the check box that says, "Also apply filter below." This way all of your mail is consistent. I will check this box. Click "Create filter". Voila! Your filter has been created! Now, whenever I receive an email from "digital-no-reply@amazon.com", it will automatically be labeled "Shopping" and will be archived instead of going into my inbox.

No One Likes Scavenger Hunts

How will I know that I received a message then if it is not going to my inbox? When you receive a new message that is automatically being labeled, the label in your Label box (to the left) will be bolded and will display the number of new messages with that label. When you see this, just click the label link and you will be taken to the message. This is a great way to keep your inbox cleaned up!

Count the Ways

If you're wondering what labels could be used for you, I will give you some examples of the labels I have:

Accounts: Any email I receive with certain account information; such as my frequent flier number.
Activities: Club mailing lists that I am on
Bills: Email confirmations of bills paid online.
Craigslist: All Craigslist emails
eBay: All eBay emails
Facebook: All Facebook emails
Freecycle: All Freecycle emails
Keep: Important emails
Need Reply: An email in need of a reply. I will remove the label once I've replied to the email.
Netflix: All Netflix emails
Roomies: All emails from my roomates
RTM: All Remember The Milk emails
Shopping: All online shopping order emails
WebDesign: Emails from web design mailing lists I am on

Almost all of those labels are applied automatically using filters. This allows me to keep my inbox very organized and clutter free. Some other simple suggestions for labels are: Friends, Family, Jobs and Work.

Worth The Trouble?

I consider labels to be one of those things that might take you some time to set-up but will absolutely save you time in the future. For example, if a roomate asks me to look up a piece of information that was sent between us in an email, I simply click my "roomies" label link and can then search within those specific emails. Another example, I like knowing that Netflix has received my disc but I don't need to see it in my inbox all the time. When it automatically has the label placed on it, I am still receiving the email but without it cluttering my inbox. By using labels, my inbox rarely has over ten emails at any given time and those that are there are ones that need my immediate attention. It is a lot easier to remember to do something if you don't have low-priority items surrounding it.

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