Problems with the Unread Label

[Kenneth]

When I click on my Unread label, I get a blank listing with a message
saying "There are no conversations with this label" even though there
are unread messages in my account. The label listing at left shows
"Unread(4)" in bold, indicating that there are four unread
conversations, but they just don't get displayed when clicking on the
label name.

The search email box at top though does get initialized with
"label:unread" and when I click the Search Mail button, the unread
conversations are finally displayed.

This isn't how this used to work. Just clicking on Unread should
display the conversations, just like clicking on any other label.

Anyone else experiencing this? Any thoughts?

[Nick Chirchirillo]

Well, I know a while ago, they turned "Unread" into a system label, and it is now impossible to create such label.  Perhaps Google made a change to Gmail's code that prevents that label from working now.

--
Nick Chirchirillo
nickchich.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Gmail-Users" group.
To post to this group, send email to gmail...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to gmail-users...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gmail-users?hl=en.

[Kenneth]

I created this Gmail account back when Gmail first started and Unread
was a system label back then. I noticed later Gmail accounts that I
created didn't come with the Unread label and had to be manually
created. But now my one-time system Unread label is listed alongside
my user created labels and has a color box beside it too. Seems that
it was converted into a user-maintained label somehow.

And it's behaving strangely. I had four unread conversations that I
had "made unread" in order to test the label's behavior but none were
being listed via the label. Then when a new incoming unread message
arrived in my inbox, the unread label was updated with the updated
count and now all are displayed via the label. Strange.

[Just_Joe]

It doesn't sound that strange. 'Unread' is a search parm (reserved word), as in "is:unread". It simply sounds like your "label" is being translated [so to speak] into a typical search. As such, you either have to do a Refresh or wait till Gmail's next auto-refresh (about every 2 minutes).

[JohnW]

The search required is  "is:unread" since the unread flag is NOT a label.

The 'Unread' on the selector drop-down is NOT the same as the search, and will only apply to the "currently displayed" label.

[Andy]

> The search required is  "is:unread" since the unread flag is NOT a label.

Actually, I suspect "Unread" IS a label. Gmail seems to have a number
of features and functions that utilize hidden (or not so hidden)
labels, and Unread seems to be one of them.

In the years I've been using Gmail, I never saw an Unread label that
was visible to me in my list of system or user labels, but it does
appear to be a (hidden) system label now.

My guess is that Gmail's code is a bit confused between your
(Kenneth's) user label and their own system label. And there might
not be anything to do about it.

Andy

[Kenneth Ayers]

The thing is, I never created an Unread label for this account.  It was just there, listed alongside the other system labels when I opened this account.

Some time later I created a few other Gmail accounts and noticed that they didn't come with an Unread system label.  So I gather the Unread label was a temporary offering.  Still this account was allowed to keep the Unread system label and it continued to work the same as it always had.

Recently though I noticed that my Unread label is being listed along with my other user created labels.  And when I go to Manage Labels, there's a remove link listed for Unread, just like my other user labels.  So it's apparently not a system label anymore.  But the conversation count for this label still gets updated with the count of unread conversations, it just takes a complete reloading of Gmail for the conversations to get listed.

[Just_Joe]

You shouldn't need to reload Gmail (unless "old code" for you account is getting in the way). If you perform a search for unread messages, leave the results, then perform the same search again later, you'll be presented with the same search results you had when you left the results the last time. All you should have to do is Refresh or wait till the next auto-refresh. It's worked this way for me "forever" (which only means as far back as I can remember... which varies from day to day :D ).

As far as the Unread system label. It's been gone for a long... long time--Google giveth and Google taketh away. I've been used to checking 'is:unread in:anywhere' for some years now. Label or no label, I think it's still a search you're doing.

[Andy]

> As far as the Unread system label. It's been gone for a long... long
> time--Google giveth and Google taketh away.

Well maybe it is gone ... and yet it isn't!

If you try to create a label "unread", it won't let you, claiming that
"it's a reserved system label".

If you search for "label:unread", it finds conversations that have
unread messages.

So it might be that the "unread" label really still exists, it's just
hidden ... and the label is the mechanism by which Gmail keeps track
of whether a message is read or not. Just like the "Inbox", "Spam",
and "Trash" system labels.

Or maybe it doesn't exist, and searching for "label:unread" is trapped
and re-directed to a search for "is:unread". Whether it is that way
or the opposite, perhaps we will never know.

Andy

[Andy]

An interesting tidbit ...

Apparently, "in:" and "label:" are synonyms for one another. It
appears that everywhere you use "in:", you can substitute "label:", or
vice-versa. They seem to be interchangeable. I never noticed this
before.

This doesn't help Kenneth, it's just something I noticed.

Andy

[Just_Joe]

Yeah, that was the first thing I noticed--that "label:unread" gets changed to "is:unread" up in the search box. Of course, one can't assume that because it works a particular way for some that it works the same way for others, especially with Google apps (they're always rolling out something or other to some but not to others). Anyway, next time just click the Refresh button to update your search results (and have Gmail re-index them in the user workspace).

[Just_Joe]

BTW/FWIW, despite its problematic anomalies the Multiple Inboxes lab is a rather better method for keeping track of unread messages than the old Unread label, presuming you want to see what's new as soon as it arrives. (Just my opinion, of course)