GMAIL COLUMN SORT - By Sender, Subject, Attachment Size, Recipient, Etc

[ci1]

I have no idea why GMAIL has avoided column sorting with it's heals
dug in for years now. In the most innovated and open minded company I
know of, this is a glaring exception. It's like some exec at gmail
hates sort and refuses to let it become part of gmail despite the true
usefulness of it and no matter how many users want it added.

Please implement column sorting. Sorting doesn't replace keyword
searching, but it is extremely useful for email management. It's just
one more highly userful tool. Google Docs has sort. So should
Gmail.

Saving and Labeling Sorts would also be a great idea.

Examples of uses:
Sort by attachment size. A quick way to clean out emails starting
with the largest to the smallest.

Sort by Sender. A quick way to scan your whole mailbox by sender
simply by scrolling to quickly make decisions about whole groups of
emails without 'searching' for each individual email by sender search.

This is a sorely needed feature. It's one of the major flaws of
Gmail. I'm still completely shocked that this hasn't been
implemented. Please open the gmail mind and implement this extremely
beneficial feature. Sort isn't a direct competitor to the search
feature, it's just another useful tool that allows for accomplishing
some email management tasks faster.

Usability enhancements should be Gmail's top priority. How can power
users manage email faster, easier and more effectively? What do
Outlook and Thunderbird offer that would also hugely benefit gmail
users? These are the questions to ponder.

Thank you for your consideration of this suggestion.

[Josh M.]

I completely agree. I love that gmail is trying to add new "cool"
things, but what it needs to do first and foremost is fill the gaps of
things that it does not offer that most standard clients have. I've
switched over to gmail, and I don't plan on switching back, but there
are times I wish I hadn't due to gmail just missing some basics (like
this column sorting).

[Haig]

yeah it would be better if gmail could nail down the basics before
they start making extras for the sake of extras.....column sort is
definately one of those basics.

[cpojoe]

Yes! For example, I was just resent an entire article series -- so I
have a whole bunch of duplicates. When I display the label filter I
have created, if I could then sort by subject, I could easily get rid
of the redundancies.

GOOGLE -- PLEASE GIVE US SORT!

On Jun 13, 2:22 pm, Haig wrote:
> yeah it would be better if gmail could nail down the basics before
> they start making extras for the sake of extras.....columnsortis
> definately one of those basics.
>
> On Jun 12, 10:26 am, ci1 wrote:
>
>
>
> > I have no idea why GMAIL has avoided column sorting with it's heals
> > dug in for years now.  In the most innovated and open minded company I
> > know of, this is a glaring exception.  It's like some exec at gmail

> > hatessortand refuses to let it become part of gmail despite the true

> > usefulness of it and no matter how many users want it added.
>
> > Please implement column sorting.   Sorting doesn't replace keyword
> > searching, but it is extremely useful for email management.  It's just

> > one more highly userful tool.  Google Docs hassort.  So should

> > Gmail.
>
> > Saving and Labeling Sorts would also be a great idea.
>
> > Examples of uses:

> >Sortby attachment size.  A quick way to clean out emails starting

> > with the largest to the smallest.
>

> >Sortby Sender.  A quick way to scan your whole mailbox by sender

> > simply by scrolling to quickly make decisions about whole groups of
> > emails without 'searching' for each individual email by sender search.
>
> > This is a sorely needed feature.  It's one of the major flaws of
> > Gmail.  I'm still completely shocked that this hasn't been
> > implemented.  Please open the gmail mind and implement this extremely

> > beneficial feature.  Sortisn't a direct competitor to the search

> > feature, it's just another useful tool that allows for accomplishing
> > some email management tasks faster.
>
> > Usability enhancements should be Gmail's top priority.  How can power
> > users manage email faster, easier and more effectively?  What do
> > Outlook and Thunderbird offer that would also hugely benefit gmail
> > users?  These are the questions to ponder.
>

> > Thank you for your consideration of this suggestion.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Lily Chen]

Yes, this feature would be very useful. How about also sorting by
labels and number of labels? It would also be really cool to integrate
it with the superstars feature and allow users to sort by superstars.

[cyngold]

ci1... YOU ROCK! I was about to write what you wrote word by word.
GMAIL: WE WANT SORT!!!!!! (What's more: we really do need it. Come on,
we left hotmail and yahoo to come here, don't send us back!)
Cyngold.

On Jun 12, 11:26 am, ci1 wrote:
> I have no idea why GMAIL has avoided column sorting with it's heals
> dug in for years now. In the most innovated and open minded company I
> know of, this is a glaring exception. It's like some exec at gmail
> hates sort and refuses to let it become part of gmail despite the true
> usefulness of it and no matter how many users want it added.
>
> Please implement column sorting. Sorting doesn't replace keyword
> searching, but it is extremely useful for email management. It's just
> one more highly userful tool. Google Docs has sort. So should
> Gmail.
>
> Saving and Labeling Sorts would also be a great idea.
>
> Examples of uses:
> Sort by attachment size. A quick way to clean out emails starting
> with the largest to the smallest.
>

> Sortby Sender. A quick way to scan your whole mailboxby sender

[Fred Calm]

Ci1,

I'm going to try to answer your questions. Gmail's not having
implemented column sorting is not because they're stubborn (heals dug
in).

Like Josh M, I've switched over too. I hardly ever use my POP client.
Not only does Gmail give a coherent view of my email regardless of
which machine I access mail from -- IMAP was supposed to do that but
it only addressed the message store, not the rest of what the user
needs, like address book and preferences (contacts and settings in
Gmail-speak) -- but the design of the interface is a big step forward.
By abstracting away the machine it runs on, any web mail system gives
coherent views. However, as one of the two poster children for AJAX,
Gmail makes web mail usable. Try the basic HTML view if you want to
see how much implementing the mail application in the browser gives
you. (Btw, the other poster child is Google Maps.)

Gmail's other big win with comes the rethinking of the message store
and the user interface. The old drill of messages, files and folders
has been around since day one, and it's the same-old, same-old
regardless of whether you're using a plain TTY, a fancy GUI client or
the web. Having conversations, rather than individual messages, as the
basic unit in the message store, is a major advance. Labels, rather
than folders, let a message appear to be in more than one place.

Sorting by Index columns would be nice, but if you think about it, a
lot of what you can get with that can be accomplished with searches or
clicking the "Oldest >>" link (reverse chronological sort), and a lot
is, IMHO, unnecessary.

Sort by sender is the one I sometimes miss. Whenever I think it would
be nice to browse my Inbox by sender, it's a Homer moment; I slap my
head and say "D'oh!" Why? It's old-school thinking. With Gmail, you
can always search by a particular sender, but conversations that sort
by sender are more complicated. How do you sort conversations with
multiple authors? A sort just by the conversation's originator
(initial author) is incomplete. In my decades of programming and using
computers, one thing I've learned is that it's better to go with the
flow. Learn how to take advantage of what a given system offers than
try to mold it into something you already know.

When I taught PL/I workshops (dating myself here) at my university's
computer center during semester breaks, I would always tell what
someone's first programming language was. PL/I tried to be all things
to all people, so you could write programs that, modulo syntactic
details, looked like Fortran or Cobol or Pascal or Basic. (No, you
couldn't fudge into looking like Lisp or APL.) After using Unix for a
while, I came across a shell script in one of the Unix news groups. It
emulated JCL (That's Job Control Language for IBM mainframes for you
youngsters). It was the height of absurdity. Illustrated how versatile
a programmable shell was, but no one would ever want to use that
script. It was a novelty. (Recall that Ken Thompson said that using
TSO was like kicking a dead whale along the beach. Time Sharing Option
was the interactive equivalent of JCL.)

Sort by sender makes sense with your standard issue POP client but not
with Gmail. Use the force, Luke.

Attachment size? Why do you care? Unless you download an attachment,
it doesn't take any space on your machine. The amount of storage space
Gmail gives us up in the cloud is already huge and continues to grow.
With Gmail, archiving is really an alternative to deleting. I still
delete messages I'm not interested in, especially non-spam commercial
mail, or messages that are ephemeral, that have a short shelf life
because they're timely. Once the date in an announcement has passed,
it usually doesn't matter. If you don't empty the trash, it still
hangs around for at least a month, just in case you need to refer back
to it.

Time for old Grandpa's -- I wish! What's taking those kids so darn
long? Do they need someone to show them how to insert tab A into slot
B -- nap.

</Fred>

On Jun 12, 10:26 am, ci1 wrote:

[peteralexisthompson]

Nope. Still want the ability. I can have as much or as little in my
interface as I want. Let me, the user, decide.

I'm using Gmail for a reason :-)

[Jonathan Camenisch]

I am also hurting for a sort feature. There's only one kind of sorting
I would really use--I want all my starred messages at the top.

My problem is I rely too heavily on my Gmail inbox. It's basically my
one and only to-do list. But it's really not quite right simply
because of the order. When items that I star move down the list, I
stop noticing them.

I want one list and only one list, with the most important things at
the top, but that would require some type of sorting (keep it simple,
yes!)

If only...

[Fred Calm]

For those who have a choice about which email app to use (at work, the
choice is often made for you), who isn't using Gmail for some reason?

Sure, user-configurable interfaces are swell. Gmail has two basic
views that deal with messages: Index views (Inbox, Starred, Sent Mail,
search results, a label, and so on) and Conversation view. Index view
organizes conversations, not individual messages. Gmail is still in
beta, and maybe they're thinking about reverse chronological index
vies or sorting index views by subject. (Reverse chronological sorting
is already there. Just click 'Oldest' and read bottom up. Does Gmail
really need another feature for that?)

But have you worked out what a sort by sender would look like in an
index view? Recall that conversations sometimes have only one message
or a single sender, but many conversations are just that --
collections of messages with more than one sender. How would you sort
those.

You (or any other user) can decide all you want, but that doesn't make
a problematic suggestion any more practical.

I'm sure that the Gmailians take our decisions into consideration, but
these suggestions don't determine their development priorities. So
decide away, but don't hold your breath waiting for features that
don't make sense or don't add much to Gmail. They've got bigger fish
to fry.

</Fred>

[Rodrigo Vieira]

I agree with you BUT Yahoo! works with SORT option and fast...

Why we are waiting for this over here?

Regards.

On 22 ago, 16:39, Fred Calm wrote:
> For those who have a choice about which email app to use (at work, the
> choice is often made for you), who isn't using Gmail for some reason?
>
> Sure, user-configurable interfaces are swell. Gmail has two basic
> views that deal with messages: Index views (Inbox, Starred, SentMail,
> search results, a label, and so on) and Conversation view. Index view
> organizes conversations, not individual messages. Gmail is still in
> beta, and maybe they're thinking about reverse chronological index
> vies or sorting index views by subject. (Reverse chronological sorting
> is already there. Just click 'Oldest' and read bottom up. Does Gmail
> really need another feature for that?)
>

> But have you worked out what asortby sender would look like in an

[Fred Calm]

On Aug 22, 11:40 pm, Rodrigo Vieira wrote:
> I agree with you BUT Yahoo! works with SORT option and fast...

Hmmm. I thought I outlined why sorting by sender is problematic. Why
do you caree about attachment size?

Attachments are up in the Google cloud, not on your machine unless you
download them.

Yet, you say you agree with me. I 'm not so sure about that.

> Why we are waiting for this over here?

I don't know. Why are you? What do you mean by "we" -- speak for
yourself, not me.

Y!'s email interface is kludgy compared to Gmail's. It's total dog
barf. In my experience, not only is it clunkier, but it also does a
much worse job of keeping track of what you';re doing, it duplicates
browser functionality by implementing tabs within tabs and it's slower
overall.

You like Y!'s interface and feature set better than Gmail's. Fine use
Y! Mail. You pays your money, you takes your choice.

</Fred>

[bulwynkl]

why do I want sort....

simple.... some times I just don't know what it is that I need to
search for...

e.g. if I've got 500 emails from a newsgroup and I can't recall which
member it is that I want to contact but can recall their name started
with 'J' then I can use sort to relitively quickly find them...

this happens more often than you might think.

sort is just another tool. It'd be usefull to have.

lets face it gmail already sorts and orders mail... by thread and by
date and by label... why not other variables as well?

if gmail allowed a bunch of users to sort by any conceivable feature
then collected stats on what fields were commonly used they would soon
get a nice top 10 sort fields they could add to the search function or
onto the main page....

On Aug 24, 1:57 pm, Fred Calm wrote:
> On Aug 22, 11:40 pm, Rodrigo Vieira wrote:
>

> > I agree with you BUT Yahoo! works withSORToption and fast...

[Older Budwieser]

Again,

* You already have chronological sort, forwards and backwards.

* Sort by sender doesn't make sense in the context of Gmail.

* Sort by subject can certainly be useful, and there are times I wish
it were there.

* Sort by recipient is not very meaningful in Gmail because the
recipient isn't displayed. Because of how little space there is in an
index view line and how cleverly Gmail uses it to show participants in
a conversation, subject and message body snippet, I don't want to see
Recipient added, nor do I think there's any value to putting in more
interface to let the user add or delete columns. In any case, the From
field is non-negotiable. As always, YMMV.

Note that (a) you can turn snippets off if you want more room for
subject and or senders and (b) there are personal level indicators
that indicate whether you are explicitly mentioned as a recipient and
further, the only recipient.

Gmail's search is flexible and pretty fast. (Searching message bodies
with Outlook Express, say, to name one widely used POP client, takes
damn near forever.) Gmail's search could be a little better, say with
a test for whether a conversation is labeled (any label) or to select
a particular flavor of star (Super stars). You'll have more success
with Gmail using it on its own terms than bitching about how it's not
like some other email system.

There's nothing further I can add to this discussion. Have a nice day.

</Fred>

Use the force, Luke.

[Steve Root]

You can connect to your email via IMAP using a client like MS
Outlook. You can then sort a folder by sender, subject etc.

Limitation = You can't add labels, you can't 'archive'

Not perfect, but it might help someone to know this.

PS - returning from holiday I have a need to sort by sender as a quick
way of distinguising automated messages from servers, ebay, amazon etc
and email from people that I need to respond too. They are all mixed
together when sorted by date and sort by sender is a fast way of me to
see them all together and archive them. As it is, I'll just IMAP in
and delete them. 98% of the time I don't miss the lack of sortby in
gmail. This is the 2% of time I miss it.

On Aug 27, 4:22 pm, Older Budwieser wrote:
> Again,
>
> * You already have chronologicalsort, forwards and backwards.
>

> *Sortby sender doesn't make sense in the context of Gmail.
>
> *Sortby subject can certainly be useful, and there are times I wish
> it were there.
>
> *Sortby recipient is not very meaningful in Gmail because the

> > with 'J' then I can usesortto relitively quickly find them...

>
> > this happens more often than you might think.
>

> >sortis just another tool. It'd be usefull to have.

>
> > lets face it gmail already sorts and orders mail... by thread and by
> > date and by label... why not other variables as well?
>

> > if gmail allowed a bunch of users tosortby any conceivable feature

> > then collected stats on what fields were commonly used they would soon

> > get a nice top 10sortfields they could add to the search function or

[brasscupcakes]

The reason search and labels can't substitute for 'sort by sender' is
because the principal use of sort by sender is to quickly delete or
mark as spam all the emails from unknown recipients whose names you
can't search for and whom you don't want to label.

On Aug 27, 11:22 am, Older Budwieser wrote:
> Again,
>
> * You already have chronological sort, forwards and backwards.
>

> * Sort bysenderdoesn't make sense in the context of Gmail.

> > > Hmmm. I thought I outlined why sorting bysenderis problematic. Why

[brasscupcakes]

forgot to add:
While the Imap / download to outlook or outlook express kludge might
have some limited utility, most people don't want to download all of
their spam messages locally in order to delete them. (unless there's
some other way of doing it I'm unaware of -- I haven't used outlook or
outlook express for decades).

[brasscupcakes]

Is there a way of doing this without actually downloading the mail
locally, ie, delete it on the server?

[maoanz]

"but many conversations are just that --
collections of messages with more than one sender. How would you sort
those. "

I am not totally agree with this. when you use an email application
and
download the email with POP3, each email is separate, so I think
physically them are not bounded together as we see.

I think Gmail doesn't want that you sort email by size and delete
them.
They want to keep as much information as possible on their server.
Just as when you download the Email with POP3, you can only archive
them but not delete them.

Personally, it doesn't bother me so much, whether gmail uses my
information
as long as they don't publish them.

[geneh]

Go on with your bad self brasscupcakes. You hit the nail on the head.

I'd like to add that it's hard to believe that Gmail Labs has wasted
their frickin' time and ours by giving us Mouse Gestures and Snakey
but they won't listen to the long-time users who are still outraged by
a lack of Sorting in Gmail. Some people may see taking their hands off
the mouse to type into a search box as efficient or taking all that
time to set up all those different combinations of filters as being
efficient but to me it is more efficient to move my mouse slightly
over a header and click on it to Sort by that header to find my
frickin' email. For those who think sorting doesn't or wouldn't work
in the Gmail context, please consider that anyone with an imagination
can see how Gmail COULD HAVE multiple contexts much like The Google
gives us the ability to change the view of their Groups threads here,
i.e. click on Options in the upper right-hand corner of this thread to
see how you can change the view to 'Standard view, View as tree,
Proportional text, or Fixed font.' Why would it be so difficult for
the great minds working with The Google to allow for different views
with Gmail as well, so that Sorters can have their Sorting and
Searchers can have their Box and Results. Yes, I'm purposely writing
with a third grade tone and verbiage to show that I'm annoyed as all
heck by the lack of Sorting in Gmail and Googles audacity to ignore
this request. Give the MASSES asking for this feature what we want for
goodness sake. If you don't know what I mean by 'MASSES' then just do
a Google on 'Gmail +sort'. If Google isn't ignoring the requests for
sorting, please point me towards the evidence to the contrary.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

On Sep 6, 1:12 pm, brasscupcakes wrote:

> The reason search and labels can't substitute for 'sortby sender' is
> because the principal use ofsortby sender is to quickly delete or

> mark as spam all the emails from unknown recipients whose names you
> can't search for and whom you don't want to label.
>
> On Aug 27, 11:22 am, Older Budwieser wrote:
>
> > Again,
>
> > * You already have chronologicalsort, forwards and backwards.
>

> > *Sortbysenderdoesn't make sense in the context of Gmail.
>
> > *Sortby subject can certainly be useful, and there are times I wish
> > it were there.
>
> > *Sortby recipient is not very meaningful in Gmail because the

> > > with 'J' then I can usesortto relitively quickly find them...

>
> > > this happens more often than you might think.
>

> > >sortis just another tool. It'd be usefull to have.

>
> > > lets face it gmail already sorts and orders mail... by thread and by
> > > date and by label... why not other variables as well?
>

> > > if gmail allowed a bunch of users tosortby any conceivable feature

> > > then collected stats on what fields were commonly used they would soon

> > > get a nice top 10sortfields they could add to the search function or

[Jesi]

I Agree, I really need this

[Asad Siddiqui]

I would love Sort as well. I agree that it might be hard to implement,
but as I see it, Gmail has a beautiful interface and Sort will only
organize and polish it further. Sender, Subject, and Date (which is
already the default) would be awesome, but I would love to see Labels.
Sometimes I open up "all mail" and just see labels EVERYWHERE with no
organization. I know I can click the specific label tab to only get
those emails, but a sense of structure and clarity never hurt anyone.
Thanks and good luck Google.

[peteralexisthompson]

@ Older Budwieser

I do agree with you as far as keeping the interface as simple as
possible, but simplicity should balance power and control, not trump
it. Take it from someone who LOVES his Apple but finds it's OS pretty
weak when it's time to WORK...

Frankly, if I could organize and search how ever I wanted when I
wanted, I'd be most likely to use a column-sort or similar capability
to select a bunch of related messages and group them to a single
conversation/thread... Y'know, when and if that functionality is
added :-)

[dtiriba]

It would be great.
I have 6GB used in my account and the sort by size would be useful to
erase the bigger messages I have.

On 25 set, 02:39, peteralexisthompson wrote:
> @ Older Budwieser
>
> I do agree with you as far as keeping the interface as simple as
> possible, but simplicity should balance power and control, not trump
> it. Take it from someone who LOVES his Apple but finds it's OS pretty
> weak when it's time to WORK...
>
> Frankly, if I could organize and search how ever I wanted when I
> wanted, I'd be most likely to use a column-sort or similar capability
> to select a bunch of related messages and group them to a single
> conversation/thread... Y'know, when and if that functionality is
> added :-)
>
> On Aug 27, 10:22 am, Older Budwieser wrote:
>
> > Again,
>
> > * You already have chronological sort, forwards and backwards.
>

> > *Sort bysender doesn't make sense in the context of Gmail.
>
> > *Sort bysubject can certainly be useful, and there are times I wish
> > it were there.
>
> > *Sort byrecipient is not very meaningful in Gmail because the

> > > if gmail allowed a bunch of users tosort byany conceivable feature

[Alys]

I would also love this, its one of the main reason I still use a
client!

On Oct 1, 5:00 am, dtiriba wrote:
> It would be great.

> I have 6GB used in my account and thesortby size would be useful to

> erase the bigger messages I have.
>
> On 25 set, 02:39, peteralexisthompson wrote:
>
> > @ Older Budwieser
>
> > I do agree with you as far as keeping the interface as simple as
> > possible, but simplicity should balance power and control, not trump
> > it. Take it from someone who LOVES his Apple but finds it's OS pretty
> > weak when it's time to WORK...
>
> > Frankly, if I could organize and search how ever I wanted when I

> > wanted, I'd be most likely to use a column-sortor similar capability

> > to select a bunch of related messages and group them to a single
> > conversation/thread... Y'know, when and if that functionality is
> > added :-)
>
> > On Aug 27, 10:22 am, Older Budwieser wrote:
>
> > > Again,
>
> > > * You already have chronologicalsort, forwards and backwards.
>

> > > *Sortbysender doesn't make sense in the context of Gmail.
>
> > > *Sortbysubject can certainly be useful, and there are times I wish
> > > it were there.
>
> > > *Sortbyrecipient is not very meaningful in Gmail because the

> > > > with 'J' then I can usesortto relitively quickly find them...

>
> > > > this happens more often than you might think.
>

> > > >sortis just another tool. It'd be usefull to have.

>
> > > > lets face it gmail already sorts and orders mail... by thread and by
> > > > date and by label... why not other variables as well?
>
> > > > if gmail allowed a bunch of users tosort byany conceivable feature
> > > > then collected stats on what fields were commonly used they would soon

> > > > get a nice top 10sortfields they could add to the search function or

[Cynthia Chen]

I swear by Gmail, but the lack of the SORT option (for names, subject,
keyworks, attachments) is disappointing.

Google---> please stop wasting time on figuring out labs like "Muzzle"
and "Snake game" and install a STANDARD FEATURE ALREADY!

Thanks!

> > > > > > </Fred>- Hide quoted text -

[Cynthia Chen]

One more thing... The beginning of this post is from JUNE. Why is
there such a delay in making this option available??!???!?!?!

On Oct 5, 1:31 pm, Alys <gacttt...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Tech Fan in UGA Country]

Agreed. This feature is sorely needed.

[mishkin]

google is an advertising company and the more data they have, the
richer they are, so I guess they just don't want us to be able to sort
by size because it encourages pruning of our email accounts ie. their
data.
at least, this is the only logical explanation I can come up with for
such a standard feature to be overlooked time and time again.

In the meantime, perhaps they will listen to public outcry. Go here
and click on
'Sort messages by size, date, sender, etc."

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=suggest


On Oct 13, 8:54 am, Tech Fan in UGA Country <keithas...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[samsam...@gmail.com]

______________________________________________________________________

to google and gmail :

Please implement a column with "email size"

and a "column sort" feature.

Your customers are, and have been asking for a long time.

Thank you...

[thephatp]

One HUGE reason why I want sort is because I actually like to sort by
sender so that I can quickly browse messages. I may not remember
every single person I want to search for, so the searching is useless
in that case. I want to browse all my messages, because I'll often
come across someone I want to reply to from a few months back, and I
don't want to have to scan each page carefully looking at the "from"
field.

Also, it's VERY handy to be able to sort by sender when looking at the
SPAM folder. I've had a number of emails accidentally get sent to
SPAM automatically, and it's REALLY annoying to have to scan every
single message and sift through the "from" field to see if any
important messages were mis-flagged.

[tim.p.riley]

I agree, these are the order of importance for me: Sort by name
primarily, then subject, then new column for size, then sort by size

On Oct 12, 1:01 pm, Cynthia Chen wrote:
> I swear by Gmail, but the lack of theSORToption (for names, subject,

> keyworks, attachments) is disappointing.
>
> Google---> please stop wasting time on figuring out labs like "Muzzle"
> and "Snake game" and install a STANDARD FEATURE ALREADY!
>
> Thanks!
>

> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[buxx]

Okay, but it must reset the standard view at all time the next time
you visit you Gmail. Otherwise the less techsavy people do not
understand it.

[stardustfalling]

here, here!
i did a search (on google of course) to find out if i was some how
missing the all important sort by feature. my inbox has grown a life
of it's own and was up as high as 600 for a little while. the majority
of these could be deleted.... but the filters are awkward and
imprecise for what i was attempting. i would at least like an auto
suggest address while typing option for the filter. but the sort by
name would be spectacular!

if the argument is against deleting... then fine. but it would still
allow me to label things much more effectively.

[Nick2]

I couldn't agree more, it would also be great if the sort option could
have a label column too in the inbox view.

On Oct 12, 3:01 pm, Cynthia Chen wrote:
> I swear by Gmail, but the lack of the SORT option (for names, subject,
> keyworks, attachments) is disappointing.
>
> Google---> please stop wasting time on figuring out labs like "Muzzle"
> and "Snake game" and install a STANDARD FEATURE ALREADY!
>
> Thanks!
>

> On Oct 5, 1:31 pm, Alys <[email address]> wrote:
>
> > I would also love this, its one of the main reason I still use a
> > client!
>
> > On Oct 1, 5:00 am, dtiriba wrote:
>
> > > It would be great.
> > > I have 6GB used in my account and thesortby size would be useful to
> > > erase the bigger messages I have.
>
> > > On 25 set, 02:39, peteralexisthompson wrote:
>
> > > > @ Older Budwieser
>
> > > > I do agree with you as far as keeping the interface as simple as
> > > > possible, but simplicity should balance power and control, not trump
> > > > it. Take it from someone who LOVES his Apple but finds it's OS pretty
> > > > weak when it's time to WORK...
>
> > > > Frankly, if I could organize and search how ever I wanted when I

> > > > wanted, I'd be most likely to use acolumn-sortor similar capability

[LisaDeanna]

I love gmail, but the lack of SORT feature drives me insane. I've
created a zillion labels to try and compensate for the lack of sort,
but its still not the same. I have nearly 5000 messages in my inbox
and if I could sort by name I could probably delete over half of
them. I really don't want to archive ALL of the old stuff simply by
date and I don't want to trash it either. Sort is what I need.

[Harry3]

Sorting seems to be the only feature which other email providers have
that gmail doesn't - the logic being that the search button is better
than anybody else's, which is true. But it is not simple at the moment
to identify all mails from one person, even if you go into contacts
and find all mail under one address - because people often change
their email addresses - so would be excellent to have the ability to
sort mail by name - with multiple addresses permitted...

And on behalf of a friend, I write to ask if anyone knows why any new
mail she receives is not being received at the top of her inbox? Mine
always comes out in bold at the very top. Hers is only in bold
according to the date the FIRST mail was received in the thread...
thanks...

[Anthony Gallela]

Thanks for the tips ... but I don't see the "Oldest" button. Where can I sort by date so that the oldest is at the top?

Thanks!

P.S. I agree with folks that the other sorting would be nice, but the by date sort is the thing I need the most.

Anthony

[Dina]

My company switched to gmail earlier this year and to be honest, I'm drowning in emails - in large part because of a lack of sorting by sender and subject.  My old email system allowed a sort by any column - and this way I could easily view all the conversations that branch of of an initial email and delete as necessary then file the ones that contained the most pertinent information.

I also am a bit lost without the feature to sort by sender - I often would go through all the email messages from a certain person to find what I was looking for, because I'd remember who sent it to me but not have luck searching on the subject.

On Thursday, June 12, 2008 10:26:28 AM UTC-4, ci1 wrote:

I have no idea why GMAIL has avoided column sorting with it's heals
dug in for years now.  In the most innovated and open minded company I
know of, this is a glaring exception.  It's like some exec at gmail
hates sort and refuses to let it become part of gmail despite the true
usefulness of it and no matter how many users want it added.

Please implement column sorting.   Sorting doesn't replace keyword
searching, but it is extremely useful for email management.  It's just
one more highly userful tool.  Google Docs has sort.  So should
Gmail.

Saving and Labeling Sorts would also be a great idea.

Examples of uses:
Sort by attachment size.  A quick way to clean out emails starting
with the largest to the smallest.

Sort by Sender.  A quick way to scan your whole mailbox by sender
simply by scrolling to quickly make decisions about whole groups of
emails without 'searching' for each individual email by sender search.

This is a sorely needed feature.  It's one of the major flaws of
Gmail.  I'm still completely shocked that this hasn't been
implemented.  Please open the gmail mind and implement this extremely
beneficial feature.  Sort isn't a direct competitor to the search
feature, it's just another useful tool that allows for accomplishing
some email management tasks faster.

Usability enhancements should be Gmail's top priority.  How can power
users manage email faster, easier and more effectively?  What do
Outlook and Thunderbird offer that would also hugely benefit gmail
users?  These are the questions to ponder.

Thank you for your consideration of this suggestion.

[cftex...@gmail.com]

So GOOGLE decides they know what is best because they WANT to do it one way vs. the other.  Reminds me of another arrogant company - Apple.  

For those Google or Apple bigots, if their pet company doesnt like it or doesnt do it that way, then that settles it. 

 

I work as an IT Consultant (18 years) and there is not a single company that has adopted GMAIL as their enterprise solution that the users HATE IT. 

GMAIL telling the sheeple (people) that they have to think one way, and use email one way vs. what everyone else uses is not in the LEAST an innovative thing.  It is called Proprietary - make the people adapt to the technology.      That stopped YEARS ago.

 

The simple fact is, millions of people have been using email  for years.  The STANDARD features in every viable email system are STANDARD because everyone Wants them, USES them, and DEMANDS them.    Just ask Lotus Notes - when they want to change the world to THEIR standard - they are virtually invisible now........... but they are better - in their own pea brains.

 

Apple argued with me about why their email didnt work like every Exchange/outlook/Android, etc etc. system out there in putting the phone number in the LOCATION field of invites in calendars for conference calls.   Apple told me that their way - getting everyone to just put the phone number in the NOTES section - was a much better and intellectually superior way.      so I simply asked them to please give me the email addresses of all the people I would be sending meeting invites to or receiving invites from in the next year so I could tell them to please change the way that 30 Million email users functioned - JUST BECAUSE APPLE DIDNT WANT IT THAT WAY.  

They still refused to acknowledge that they were missing a simple STANDARD FEATURE - rendering their iphone product virtually useless for business users.   Fortunately, when I called the EVP at Microsoft that was advocating that the IPHONE was Enterprise Ready - and explained this lack of a feature,  He went APE ***** and placed a call to Apple - suprize........it now is there.

 

Google....... get your arrogant head our of your flabby ass....and stop telling us "the BETTER way".      If you want proof - offer both options and see which options the public - YOUR CUSTOMERS - want.   we will vote with our mouse clicks.  

 

I always avoided people that had the fatal combination of arrogance and ignorance.   seems to apply to companies too.

[Scott Mills]

Please, please someone at google add this feature.  Many of my staff want to dump Gmail because of this.... all the major email enterprise email systems and even the d@mn consumer web based systems allow this. 

[rick zaleski2]

  !!! I can't believe that this request has gone on since 2008 with no results !!!

 It makes me think that the GMAIL programmers are all ex-gamers who are more interested in creating goofy apps and not serious enough to take on the challenge of making an efficient and user friendly GMAIL app that all other email programs have. Any comments/replies that use the phrase "But why would you want to do that...?" shows that the author has a minimal understanding of the user requirements of an email product and that he cannot leave his comfort zone to ask "Why do all the other email programs have that feature?".

After reading all of the other comments in this group it appears to me that one should not expect a GMAIL sort feature to ever be implemented until the GMAIL programming organization decides to change their selective tunnel vision attitude and start producing value features that may not be "fun" to program/implement but fulfill the needs of their customers. 

My solution is to configure my MS Outlook email to process my gmail messages so I can have the features that allow me to be productive.

[GeorgeB]

After 5 yrs...we might as well forget it. I do try to figure out how those clowns think.

I left Yahoo after 15 yrs because of the "insert picture" feature of gmail. 

Now I find out that yes, the insert the image feature is still GREAT (if you can find it), but in so many other aspects Yahoo looks better for the thinking people.

And now we have the travesty of the new "compose" page...what a disaster.

ARE WE STUCK WITH GOOGLE and its geeks???

How can I configure my 2003 Outlook so I can read my gmail there? A link please??

It will be greatly appreciated!

[paphi...@dalkia.com]

Bonjour,

Nouvel utilisateur de Gmail, je suis très surpris de l'impossibilité de trier par colonnes.

C'est une erreur qu'il faut corriger.

Même si l'utilisation par l'action recherche est efficace (un peu trop, puisque tout et n'importe quoi s'y retrouve).

Cordialement

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[AMS]

+1

[Sedaray]

Yahoo has tabs - I can now work on several emails at once.

I do more work online now.

Offline on Entourage it lets me create folders to archive.

I can sort any way a real computer does - not the toy computer they have at Google.

I'm not likely to buy a Google-branded-OS phone, tablet or computer either - my life is too short.

I only give gmail address to senders with big files that I need to keep.  Until gmail gets sort I'm not going to make my life miserable.

I tried to sort my moms thousands of emails in the inbox.  She'd name names and I'd make a filter.  Got it down to about 2000.  Went home.

[ReRem]

Hello,

I join my voice to obtain ultimately the sort of Email by name, subjects, size ...

It's a pity that this wonderfull tool that is Gmail miss this essential function.

A goog idea for a new year gift

RR

[George Still]

Completely agree.

If you're running out of space, the first thing you would do is search for the items with the largest attachments.

Archive the attachments, and then remove the attachments from the mail, or the mail item altogether.

Either add columns, or add search / sort / filter functions.

[Clint Hanks]

Definitely needs to be added

[GeorgeB]

It is good to see the revival of this subject since last August (2013).

I hope we all noticed the original posting is from June 12, 2008 10:26:28 AM UTC-4...

More than FIVE (5) years ago...

Maybe Google will add sorting...but I won't be holding my breath...

On Thursday, June 12, 2008 10:26:28 AM UTC-4, ci1 wrote:

I have no idea why GMAIL has avoided column sorting with it's heals
dug in for years now.  In the most innovated and open minded company I
know of, this is a glaring exception.  It's like some exec at gmail
hates sort and refuses to let it become part of gmail despite the true
usefulness of it and no matter how many users want it added.

Please implement column sorting.   Sorting doesn't replace keyword
searching, but it is extremely useful for email management.  It's just

one more highly useful tool.  Google Docs has sort.  So should
Gmail.

(Snip- snip)

[WillowRaven]

Yea, I don't understand why they have ignored the literally THOUSANDS of request for this sorting feature - as shown by the numerous prior threads, found in the searches:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/gmail-labs-suggest-a-labs-feature/sort$20by$20email$2C$20subject

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/gmail-labs-suggest-a-labs-feature/sort$20inbox

Someone tried to say that 'search' and 'sort' are the same thing.  They aren't.  Many of the other email providers have the ability to sort by various parameters - sender's address, subject, date, attachment (if it has one or not) and so on. Gmail seems to be one of only a rare few that does NOT offer this option and it baffles me as to WHY they don't.

~WillowRaven

On Thursday, June 12, 2008 9:26:28 AM UTC-5, ci1 wrote:

I have no idea why GMAIL has avoided column sorting with it's heals
dug in for years now.  In the most innovated and open minded company I
know of, this is a glaring exception.  It's like some exec at gmail
hates sort and refuses to let it become part of gmail despite the true
usefulness of it and no matter how many users want it added.

Please implement column sorting.   Sorting doesn't replace keyword
searching, but it is extremely useful for email management.  It's just

one more highly userful tool.  Google Docs has sort.  So should
Gmail.

[Martha Haines]

I love Gmail, EXCEPT that I cannot sort for unread email without showing all of the already read messages. I am considering going back to Outlook just for this feature! 

[AL G]

THERE IS ONLY ONE REASON WHY GOOGLE WON'T AND NEVER WILL ADD SORTING:

• Nothing to do with some lame paradigm" or "abstraction" rationale.
• It's all about ad revenue$ . 
• Somehow, not adding this feature that users have been requesting for years benefits Google.
• Perhaps it's a proxy for measuring how far they can go with users before it starts affecting the user base.  For now, it's not irritating enough that I stop using Google products. 
• Possibly it has something to do with advertising.  If I can sort by Sender or Subject, I can easily kill al spam mail and junk mail, and identify the mail that I care about.  
  Does anyone ever wonder why, regardless of how users update their spam filters,  email that they care about inevitably end up in embedded with the spam advertisements??? This forces hapless users to sort through the email garbage to make sure they didn't miss anything. 
• More likely, it's for all the above, and many other insidious reasons.
  Make no mistake, folks, these guys are not angels.  They'll do anything profitable as long as it's legal.  I think if it's not illegal to kill people and make profit from selling the harvested parts, Google will be in that business in no time.  

[onog...@gmail.com]

Please, please, please allow us to sort by column!  I need this feature.

[Rocky Herring]

OK Google, if you do not have the ability, or know how to at least attempt to give us sorting capability, just let us know.  It's a feature we want. If you just refuse to do it because you do not want to offer it, just let us know.  Again, it's what we want.  It does not matter if you think we need it or not.,  It's what we want and expect. As a group, we are giving you tons of data to sort through and feed us adds, the least you can do is attempt to keep us happy while you use us.  Just let us know.   

[I WISH GMAIL WOULD HAVE SORT COLUMNS]

I don't want to create no stinking lables i don't want to search for anything. MOST USERS WANT THE ABILITY TO JUST CLICK THE SORT BY COLUMN X radio button... All this other stuff your saying no one cares. Why can't GMAIL do it like every other webbased email webbased client or email client for that matter.

[Nathan Too]

Yes! That is all. I think this should "be a thing" ****flies away***

[WillowRaven]

I have been requesting this particular function for YEARS.   I have had people say 'they have the 'search' function - that is NOT the same thing ... not even close.

For God's sake, Google... get with the times.  Pretty much all the other email providers have this option as part of their basic options ... why don't you????????

At this stage of the game, this should even be a question... we should even have to be asking and asking and asking.... this should already have been implemented.

Why are you dragging your feet on this - and other long-time requested suggestions, like larger font selection in the compose function (just to name another request)??

Get with the program Google .... please (!!!!!) add this function of being able to sort columns by all the different parameters (email address, subject, date, attachment, etc) !!!

[WillowRaven]

Agreed .... tired of all the filters and labels and stuff - and even THAT isn't totally doing what being able to sort by columns can do.  Its a totally different thing.  Instead of trying all these work-arounds, why not just do the actual thing and be able to sort by column?  The fact that other email providers can do it says that it can be done!!!

[Alison Murray]

Hmm... I don't think you get the point.  

That fact is that sites like Amazon, LinkedIn, Ebay, Youtube, etc clog up your inbox with repeated notifications... These are not conversations.  They are not spam.  and for many of them, the domain uses uses multiple "sending" ids.  So over time, in my thousands of emails, I have no way of reviewing emails in order to take care of the administration....  

And because they clog up your inbox, you are always in danger of missing something important... eg, one can easily go beyond the 100 conversations per page limit.

With each of these entries falling on a separate line and no way to expand/collapse these entries, it becomes even more problematic.

And please don't suggest filters.  Every time I set one up, I have to set up at least one more. Having to search individually takes up an inordinate amount of time.

An easier solution is simply to use Outlook, but then I have the same issue across all the platforms from which I access my mail..   I would prefer to keep it to one source and use standard pattern recognition to group and manage.

So if you can say the alphabet backwards in under 5 seconds, then you'll almost be as fast as me.  I need a tool to help me, not hold me back as I try to get things done.  

Grouping / sorting by sender would save me at least two hours a weeks.  How can I recommend using GMail for business if every person in an organisation faced the same difficulty?

Alison

On Friday, 8 August 2008 18:19:27 UTC+1, Older Bud Weiser wrote:

Ci1,

I'm going to try to answer your questions. Gmail's not having
implemented column sorting is not because they're stubborn (heals dug
in).

Like Josh M, I've switched over too. I hardly ever use my POP client.
Not only does Gmail give a coherent view of my email regardless of
which machine I access mail from -- IMAP was supposed to do that but
it only addressed the message store, not the rest of what the user
needs, like address book and preferences (contacts and settings in
Gmail-speak) -- but the design of the interface is a big step forward.
By abstracting away the machine it runs on, any web mail system gives
coherent views. However, as one of the two poster children for AJAX,
Gmail makes web mail usable. Try the basic HTML view if you want to
see how much implementing the mail application in the browser gives
you. (Btw, the other poster child is Google Maps.)

Gmail's other big win with comes the rethinking of the message store
and the user interface. The old drill of messages, files and folders
has been around since day one, and it's the same-old, same-old
regardless of whether you're using a plain TTY, a fancy GUI client or
the web. Having conversations, rather than individual messages, as the
basic unit in the message store, is a major advance. Labels, rather
than folders, let a message appear to be in more than one place.

Sorting by Index columns would be nice, but if you think about it, a
lot of what you can get with that can be accomplished with searches or
clicking the "Oldest >>" link (reverse chronological sort), and a lot
is, IMHO, unnecessary.

Sort by sender is the one I sometimes miss. Whenever I think it would
be nice to browse my Inbox by sender, it's a Homer moment; I slap my
head and say "D'oh!" Why? It's old-school thinking. With Gmail, you
can always search by a particular sender, but conversations that sort
by sender are more complicated. How do you sort conversations with
multiple authors? A sort just by the conversation's originator
(initial author) is incomplete. In my decades of programming and using
computers, one thing I've learned is that it's better to go with the
flow. Learn how to take advantage of what a given system offers than
try to mold it into something you already know.

When I taught PL/I workshops (dating myself here) at my university's
computer center during semester breaks, I would always tell what
someone's first programming language was. PL/I tried to be all things
to all people, so you could write programs that, modulo syntactic
details, looked like Fortran or Cobol or Pascal or Basic. (No, you
couldn't fudge into looking like Lisp or APL.) After using Unix for a
while, I came across a shell script in one of the Unix news groups. It
emulated JCL (That's Job Control Language for IBM  mainframes for you
youngsters). It was the height of absurdity. Illustrated how versatile
a programmable shell was, but no one would ever want to use that
script. It was a novelty. (Recall that Ken Thompson said that using
TSO was like kicking a dead whale along the beach. Time Sharing Option
was the interactive equivalent of JCL.)

Sort by sender makes sense with your standard issue POP client but not
with Gmail. Use the force, Luke.

Attachment size? Why do you care? Unless you download an attachment,
it doesn't take any space on your machine. The amount of storage space
Gmail gives us up in the cloud is already huge and continues to grow.
With Gmail, archiving is really an alternative to deleting. I still
delete messages I'm not interested in, especially non-spam commercial
mail, or messages that are ephemeral, that have a short shelf life
because they're timely. Once the date in an announcement has passed,
it usually doesn't matter. If you don't empty the trash, it still
hangs around for at least a month, just in case you need to refer back
to it.

Time for old Grandpa's -- I wish! What's taking those kids so darn
long? Do they need someone to show them how to insert tab A into slot
B -- nap.

</Fred>

[YA]

I agree 100% !!

 it would definitely be a tremendous help  and powerful tool.

Similar requests ans suggestion was already posted.

[Unknown]

The discussion in this thread is 6 yrs old. So (again), I would not hold my breath.

Like you said WillowRaven, there must be THOUSANDS of requests out there for the same subject: Multiple Sorting

Nothing from Google...Why???...Keep on reading:

Whatever Google does, has one common purpose: Make us stay on their mail page a few seconds longer...or even minutes longer.

More time spent at their site...more $$$ the can charge their advertisers - who pay the bills.

The search functions ensures that, compared with the "Multiple Sorting" option...

They are here to make money (like most of us) and I do NOT blame them!

[Steve Cole]

I don't know where this gets posted... But count me in on this.  Maybe we should all threaten to move to Yahoo Mail.  It does all of what we ask for...

And it get's hijacked.  What fun!!!

[Unknown]

And to think I "left" Yahoo 2-3 yrs ago, because they were upgrading their mailer and while they were doing it, the place was a mess!

Plus, I liked the "Insert Picture" function that Gmail had...and still does - while Yahoo never offered it.

It is like with any other "product": Pick the one that best fits your needs...but never 100% :-(

[Mitchell Graff]

YES - PLEASE add sorting!  So easy to delete all messages from a specific sender.  It'll help YOU minimize wasted HDD space, too!  Its so easy - why not???

[GCB1966]

The discussion in this thread is 6 yrs old. So (again), I would not hold my breath.

Like you said WillowRaven, there must be THOUSANDS of requests out there for the same subject: Multiple Sorting

Nothing from Google...Why???...Keep on reading:

How do you expect Google to sell you extra storing Gbs??

The like to make $$$ - like most of us!

[WillowRaven]

Because, simply, people who like and appreciate and find basic functionality important and necessary are GOING to stay there longer and USE it, so you would *think* they would add much-asked-for features to make it that much more enjoyable/pleasant/easier for the user to use their service ..... and in turn, generate more interest (and money) for their products/services.  The thing is, this kind of option (sort by email address/subject/email size/date/ etc) is something that has been asked for for a LONG time, here in labs (and I'm sure in direct emails to Google) - for the last several years.  We know, by virtue of the other email providers, that it can be done, and most email providers have it available as 'default' (and not as a Lab/extension or anything else) so WHY WHY WHY are they being so stubborn on this??

Honestly, Google/Gmail - look through these labs, and at the responses here.... you will see HUNDREDS (if not thousands) of people asking for this particular option - either as a Lab or just part of the actual email options..... please stop dragging your feet and ADD THIS.

~WillowRaven

[awesome ideas]

I do believe that it is a good idea but could that be maybe in a drop down arrow with all your contacts that changes color when there is new mail from that sender?

just a suggestion i think would make it work more efficiently because if you have a lot of contacts that will get crowded pretty quickly... just saying

[awesome ideas]

I do believe that it is a good idea but could that be maybe in a drop down arrow with all your contacts that changes color when there is new mail from that sender?

just a suggestion i think would make it work more efficiently because if you have a lot of contacts that will get crowded pretty quickly... just saying

On Thursday, June 12, 2008 12:54:04 PM UTC-6, Josh M. wrote:

I completely agree.  I love that gmail is trying to add new "cool"
things, but what it needs to do first and foremost is fill the gaps of
things that it does not offer that most standard clients have.  I've
switched over to gmail, and I don't plan on switching back, but there
are times I wish I hadn't due to gmail just missing some basics (like
this column sorting).

[WillowRaven]

Well the "sort" would be with the heading of each column - then you could just click on whichever heading you wanted it to sort.  Keep in mind that "sort" is much different than "search"..... you aren't searching for things from a particular sender - you are SORTING your [entire] inbox (for example - if you wanted to sort it by 'sender', you would click on the 'sender' header and then it would sort the complete inbox, by sender name, in alphabetical order - and you could specify if you wanted it ascending or descending) ... if you wanted to sort by "subject" it would do the same thing except it would sort and alphabetize using the Subject line as it's sorting criteria.   "Search" looks for only things that fit in with your [particular] search criteria - "sort" is something altogether different.  If I was trying to continually find something for a particular 'search' criteria (for example, items from a particular sender) then I would set up a filter to put a label on all the things with that criteria on them, and add that label to anything new that arrives in my inbox (that also meets the criteria) .... again .... sort and search are MUCH different things.  If you had a large amount of items in a particular filter (think "folder" in other email programs and providers") then you could again use "sort" within that "filter" to sort by sender's name, or subject, or date - or whatever sort options were available.  It actually makes finding things a LOT easier, and quicker.

Based on your wording, it seems like you are confusing the two - sort/search - and if not, my apologies.

~WillowRaven

[WillowRaven]

There are no sort options available, currently, within Gmail.  It displays your email in date order, most recent being at the top, oldest being at the very end (last page for those that have multiple pages of inbox)... you can't even 'sort' by the date by ascending OR descending order .... its only in 'descending' (from newest to oldest).  There aren't even any TABS or headers at the top of each column to sort them.  The only kind of "tabs" they have are actually "filters" (Primary/Social/Promotions/Updates):

(this is all the way at the top of my inbox)  ....  and they aren't even that helpful (and don't seem to keep your changes, for example, when you move something to one of the other filters because you want it in there instead, and it continues to show up in the other one instead) .... and have NOTHING to do with sorting capabilities for the [entire] inbox.  Sorting by any of those columns would be VERY beneficial - not to mention almost every other email provider has 'sort by ____ (sender/subject line/date/attachment or not, etc)' available by default.  Gmail doesn't even have it available as a lab/addition.

~WillowRaven

On Wednesday, August 27, 2008 10:22:19 AM UTC-5, Older Bud Weiser wrote:

Again,

* You already have chronological sort, forwards and backwards.

* Sort by sender doesn't make sense in the context of Gmail.

* Sort by subject can certainly be useful, and there are times I wish
it were there.

* Sort by recipient is not very meaningful in Gmail because the
recipient isn't displayed. Because of how little space there is in an
index view line and how cleverly Gmail uses it to show participants in
a conversation, subject and message body snippet, I don't want to see
Recipient added, nor do I think there's any value to putting in more
interface to let the user add or delete columns. In any case, the From
field is non-negotiable. As always, YMMV.

Note that (a) you can turn snippets off if you want more room for
subject and or senders and (b) there are personal level indicators
that indicate whether you are explicitly mentioned as a recipient and
further, the only recipient.

Gmail's search is flexible and pretty fast. (Searching message bodies
with Outlook Express, say, to name one widely used POP client, takes
damn near forever.) Gmail's search could be a little better, say with
a test for whether a conversation is labeled (any label) or to select
a particular flavor of star (Super stars). You'll have more success
with Gmail using it on its own terms than bitching about how it's not
like some other email system.

There's nothing further I can add to this discussion. Have a nice day.

</Fred>

Use the force, Luke.

[WillowRaven]

I meant to add -- keep in mind that "sort" is very different from "search" and different than having a "filter" set up.

~WillowRaven

[John M]

I realise that this thread is very old and that the topic has been discussed to death but I need to add my "please Google" request to the pile.

I'm in the midst of migrating our business email to GApps. Currently the single biggest issue for users is not being able to order their inbox so that the oldest item is at the top.

We make heavy use of filters, labels and searches but not being able to order the message-sets means that I am (begrudgingly) having to permit some users to keep Outlook as their mail client :/

So, from a paying customer, please consider adding sort functionality to the GMail client !

[Sharon Leslie]

Do any of you know if the column sorting issue has been addressed/resolved by Google?

[Goofy 235]

Sharon,

The short answer is NO!

(copy/paste from an old posting)

This site might be helpful: http://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/sort-gmail-by-sender/

There are plenty more once you use Google Search...

So, since this discussion is almost SEVEN years old - and holding your breath for that long could be injurious to one's health - I will add my "regular" pessimistic note:

In case you think someone from Google monitors this forum or this is a popularity contest, take a look at:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail-labs-suggest-a-labs-feature/Wz55gyU03h4

No wonder, as of right now, we have 106,134 ACTIVE topics in this forum and growing every day :-(

But...keep on asking, you never know!!!

[Goofy 235]

BTW, very popular discussion. 2,291 views in almost 7 years!

...and Google says "who cares"!

[thamcore]

Doing emails chronologically is the uppermost inefficient way to process them.

If you sort per subject, sender etc... you can process your inbox on average 10 times faster. See research below.

Searching, filtering and labeling is absolutely not the same. 

Not sorting email is so extremely inefficient that I will return to using MSOutlook notwithstanding its many quirks i don't like, In MSOutlook I can sort my email with 1 (ONE!) click!

Much research supports this experience

Quote from the well researched book  “BRAINCHAINS. Discover your brain and unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected multitasking world” 

page 363

1.     Sub-batch or mini-batch your e-mail

If you have lots of mails in an inbox you want to clean up, avoid at all costs doing them one by one in bits and pieces of “lost” time. Moreover, the default order in which your mails are usually ordered is by date. If you start looking at the most recent ones you may miss information from previous ones and if you start with the oldest, you might answer questions that have already been answered in the meantime. You will be surprised how fast and how many mails you can process if you “sub-batch” your e-mails by sorting or arranging them. In MS Outlook click on “arranged by” at the top of the list and order them by subject, by sender or whatever is most logical or efficient for you to manage many different mails at once.

Usually you only need to do two well-chosen sub-batches to process e-mail very quickly. For example, you start by arranging them by sender, scan them fast to see if you got any from really important people and do these first without looking at the others. Then you sort them by subject. Scan them quickly and react only to the really important subjects (remember Eisenhower).

Then you process all the others, but still in sub-batches. With the preview on, you know at a glance what the mini-batch is about and you can often answer, file or delete 10 e-mails at once. 

This is most efficient of course on a big screen in your office, where you have a much better overview and all information you need in sight, rather than on the micro-screen of your phone where it is ridiculous to try to be efficient.

Some people like to archive their e-mails in separate folders or to give them labels. That’s what I used to do myself. I realized that this is a waste of time if you have an excellent desktop search tool. Since even in the latest MS Office the search tool is less than mediocre, I keep using my X1 desktop search tool (Copernic is an alternative) and I put all the mails I want to keep in one archive batch. I flag a few e-mails before filing if I cannot respond or delete immediately. My e-mail program opens on these flagged ones (see below).

Warning: when you are doing an e-mail batch, do not follow any links to the Internet in your e-mails, especially in your digital detox or iDetox period because the temptation will be too great to start surfing and task-hopping. See the chapter about the Sirens.

Google please, please please provide a sorting function!! 

 

[WillowRaven]

I fully agree!!! Not only did I post in this thread, I had started one of my own about this very topic quite a time before this was created. It's sad that Google / Gmail sets up these forums, request suggestions and then ignores them - why? This particular feature has been requested for years and the fact its still requested speaks volumes. Being able to sort by sender, subject, etc, would make cleaning out my inbox, and addressing important emails, so much easier and quicker. I do not understand why they are dragging their heels on this? Why they don't check these forums for the suggestions and feedback THEY requested.

[Goofy 235]

This baby started in 2008!!!

Or almost SEVEN years ago...I don't think they're gonna do it :-)

As for your "WHY" question: Google is trying to sell YOU extra storage space...for a fee!

Why then make it easy for YOU to delete emails??

They're here to make money, like most of us...so I do NOT blame them!

[WillowRaven]

If they were hell bent on trying to sell space they wouldn't be adding space to the accounts every day. When I got my very first Gmail address it was by invitation only and only 2 GB account space, then it went to 3, then 5, and so on until almost 10 years later a free account has about 15 gigs of space. If they were trying so hard to make you buy space, they wouldn't be providing so much for free. The best way is to provide a product that features options many want, and the "sort" option is one of them and, in turn, might prompt people to actually purchase larger accounts since it would have both large account space AND much desired functions.

~WillowRaven

[Goofy 235]

Point well taken, WillowRaven

But, I still try to answer unanswerable questions...

Only the Google-ites know...and the do NOT read this forum :-(

[Rodney Scales]

let me just add my support for the NEED to have a column in the SENT folder that shows to whom I sent the message.  Omission is a massive oversight in design.  PLEASE ADD THIS EXTRA COLUIMN.

[Goofy 235]

This is SEVEN (7) years old...Hope Spring Eternal...

(copy/paste from an older posting)

In case you think someone from Google monitors this forum or this is a popularity contest, take a look at:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail-labs-suggest-a-labs-feature/Wz55gyU03h4

So, keep on asking/begging/pleading/cajoling/threatening, you never know...BUT, don't hold your breath :-)

On Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 9:26:28 AM UTC-5, ci1 wrote:

(snip-snip)

[La Katia]

goofy please, write message for PERSON not for machines.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SUGGESTING, and I suppose I am not the only one

[Goofy 235]

Katia Ocana: I wonder how one gets admitted in Aloha College...

[La Katia]

 lol

[Tandy]

Hi ci1 !

After 8 years... Google did not develop this Labs or functionality for Gmail.

So, I´m happy and, I´m using 1 TB of storage in Yahoo Mail, and, I can read all my mail from Gmail, organized, sorted with a fast interface from Yahoo.

Best regards,

Tandy

[Goofy 235]

You got it, Tandy!

(copy/paste from an old posting)

Has been requested by many Gmail users since 2008 - the year this Forum started.

Ignored by Google :-(

In case you think someone from Google monitors this forum or this is a popularity contest, take a look at:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail-labs-suggest-a-labs-feature/Wz55gyU03h4

So, keep on asking/+1/begging/pleading/cajoling/threatening, you never know...BUT, don't ​hope​ for a miracle :-)