Re: [Gmail-Users] Folders vs. Labels
Olivia
I know that the people at Gmail like labels better than folders. I am
an old hotmail user and still have my hotmail account. Overal gmail
has better features and is a better product. Hotmail's setup IS more
organized and structured, though.
And folders.....Come on, Folders are the shit. Labels are like putting
post it notes on all the junk on your desk. Yes, everything has a
label but it's a mess. If you were to take all that junk on your desk
and put them into 3 or 4 folders everything is neater and tidier.
The problem with labels and archiving is that everything is scattered
everywhere. When you archive something, You view it by selecting "All
mail." I don't want my archived mail to be mixed in with all my mail.
That defeats the purpose of archiving it. A better solution would be
for archived mail to be sent to an archive FOLDER that only contains
mail that is archived. The key word is FOLDER....
Nick Chirchirillo
The point of archiving your mail is to get it out of your inbox. If you really want to, why don't you create an "Archive" label and label things you want to be important "Archive". Your problem with your archived mail being mixed with all your mail doesn't make sence. What mail would you rather put in your "Archive" folder than be part of all your mail? Plus, if there were an Archive folder, then the link for All Mail would be missleading because it would not display all your mail, rather only the mail you haven't "placed in the archives".
--
-Nick
Jim Barr
You wrote...
"The problem with labels and archiving is that everything is scattered
everywhere. When you archive something, You view it by selecting "All
mail." I don't want my archived mail to be mixed in with all my mail.
That defeats the purpose of archiving it."
I think you are missing the point about Archiving. All Archiving does
is remove the message's "Inbox" Label, removing it from the Inbox view.
It's a way to clean up your Inbox. And you are correct, because the
reality is that the "All mail" view becomes overly cumbersome once you
accumulate a large number of messages, and leveraging Gmail's Labels
and Searching becomes essential for effective Gmail use. Believe me,
when you have almost 3000 email mesasges, Labels and Search are
Godsends.
So that's where Labels come in. The key to successful Gmail
organization is to faithfully Label ANYTHING that comes into your Inbox
that you do not delete or mark as Spam. When you Archive messages, they
drop out of the Inbox view, but they remain in the associated Label
view(s). Using Label list on the left of the screen is then no
different from your Folder list...
...except that you can put multiple Labels on an email making later
retrieval easier. For example, say your father sends you a chatty
email. You put it in a "Family" folder. Next, your friend sends you an
email containing a joke, so you put it into a "Jokes" folder. But what
do you do when your brother sends you an email containing a Joke? Where
do you put it? That's where the Folder concept breaks down. Labeling
lets you apply multiple categories to your email to better manage them.
In this example, you would put BOTH Labels on the joke email from your
brother making it a snap to find later. If you search on label:Jokes
then you will find it. If you search on label:Family, you will find it.
And even better, if you search on label:Jokes label:Family you will
find only those jokes sent by family members. Once you "get" the Label
concept, Folders seem so...20th Century!
You also wrote...
"Labels are like putting post it notes on all the junk on your desk.
Yes, everything has a
label but it's a mess."
Using your analogy, hopefully you should be able to see the real power
in Gmail. Gmail is like having a secretary or an assistant who does
nothing but accurately and faithfully retrieves only the stuff from
your desk that you ask for based on the Post-it notes you put on all
the junk. The point is that once you have Labeled everything, it is
organized! The problem is that you must apply a Label for the system to
work well--something Gmail does not enforce that Folder-based systems
do.
So, the important thing is to remember to Label all messages!
-Jim Barr
http://GmailTips.com
Jonathon Blake
>The key to successful Gmail organization is to faithfully Label
ANYTHING that comes into your Inbox that you do not delete or mark as
Spam.
Shouldn't that be "Label EVERYTHING"?
xan
jonathon
--
Ethical conduct is a vice.
Corrupt conduct is a virtue.
Motto of Nacarima.
Jim Barr
email in Gmail and you want to keep it, Label it!
dano
called Archive and then move the mail you want into that label. Think
of each label as a folder. Tag the mail you want with different labels
(Work, Personnel, Softball, Tech Stuff, etc.) I have about 16 labels
right now & have no problem archiving or finding what I'm looking for.
Chuck Tomasi
There is already a system specific label called that.
--Chuck Tomasi
--Host of the Gmail Podcast
--http://www.chuckchat.com
Joe at ewizmo.com
1. Archive your email after labelling it.
2. Use search to find what you're looking for (Google is a Search
company)
Sean
the system specific problem.
Olivia
Zack (Doc)
all mail. He wanted something that only included items he hadn't
labeled but had archived (or something like that, it was very
confusing).
Olivia
seank...@gmail.com
1. Labels ARE folders (in a sense).
2. Google should apply some sort of label defined as "no label" so you
can find all un-labelled email quickly. I agree with this addition
whole-heartedly....
3. Gmail is a COMPLETLY DIFFERENT perspective of email. It is a
progression of how to handle email. It is NOT like hotmail, yahoo, your
ISP, your outlook, your outlook express...people who make the switch
should understand Gmail is an entirely different method for retrieving
email. It may or may not have, pros and cons associated with it.
Although, as a complete computer geek, so far, I appreciate their
approach to it. Much easier, once understood...
4. email is easily assigned labels, searched upon, and found via
Google's technology. If you are set in stone and like OE, Outlook,
hotmail, yahoo, etc then you will not have an easy time transitioning
between such and Gmail. You have to be willing to re-learn how you deal
with email, and in my opinion, once done so, is a much better approach.
well, just my opinion....
Zack (Doc)
>
> Gmail world:
> 1. Labels ARE folders (in a sense).
> 2. Google should apply some sort of label defined as "no label" so you
> can find all un-labelled email quickly. I agree with this addition
> whole-heartedly....
There is a greasemonkey script for this in the mean-time, but please
suggest it to Google. I have, and the more that do the more likely
they'll implement it.
v gmailU
make a stinking label called ARCHIVE and then archive the emails to
that LABEL...
think outside of the box...
use the tools available to you....
structure your labels in a way that you can get to the emails you are
interested in...
to merely click archive forces you to look at all the emails -
especially if they have poorly created subjects!!! - over and over and
over again... hence labels...
it is not much diggerent that hotmail... which tho you think of as a
heirarchal folder system
is just the same as what you can set up in googlelabels if you
structure the labelname in a logical fashion...
v gmailU
v gmailU
read the preposition THAT you do not delete or mark as spam....
the word ANYTHING is correct...
v gmailU
dont get hung up on a label name...
call it something that you want.. historical archival archiveS
myARCHIVE myARCHIVEs...blah blah blah...
even if you call it 000
so that it sits on the top of the label stack...
just create a name and then add the nameor nameS to the email and then
click archive...
one has to think about how to set up their own system...outside the box
at times....
use what you know of another system's set up and apply it...
dano
trying to get the point across that labels & folders can be treated the
same way
D Knight
Dominic.J.Koh wrote:
> I know that the people at Gmail like labels better than folders. I am
> an old hotmail user and still have my hotmail account. Overal gmail
> has better features and is a better product. Hotmail's setup IS more
> organized and structured, though.
>
> post it notes on all the junk on your desk. Yes, everything has a
> and put them into 3 or 4 folders everything is neater and tidier.
>
If you're interested in a more in-depth view on why tags and labels are
a better way of organizaing data vs. a traditional hierarchial
categorization system like folders, this article is a good read.
<a
href="http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html">http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html</a>
seank...@gmail.com
i have suggested it to google, over other things, twice already...they
need an "unlabelled" idenitifier either through a label of a search
string such as label: unlabelled...something...
Olivia
Jay Patel
how do you move mail to labels or folder?
please let me know if you know it.
thanks
jay
JAY PATEL
Justin Gruenberg
> tutorial you will find out. Or I don't know if Subbu is around her, he is an
> expert in that one.
>
According to http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=7190
there is no such query.
Zack (Doc)
D Knight
Correct, there is no predefined way to do this. I thought you could do
it by creating a query that negates each label but it doesn't seem to
work for me now.
For example: "-label:one -label:two -label:three" and etc...
Olivia
Nick Chirchirillo
hi,
how do you move mail to labels or folder?
please let me know if you know it.
thanks
jay
-Nick
-----
Fight back spam! Download the Blue Frog.
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John MacAdam
ie: I have most stuff from my advisor filtered into both "school related" and "important crap"
Jim Barr
"how do you move mail to labels or folder? please let me know if you
know it. "
You select a message (either open a message or click the checkbox next
to a message in the Inbox view) and then you click the "More
Actions..." dropdown. Any Labels you previously defined are listed
there (if there are none, then click the "New label..." selection.)
Select a Label and Gmail applies the Label to the message. Clicking on
any of the Labels listed on the left column will display all messages
tagged with that Label.
But...that does not remove the message from the inbox...it just adds a
Label. To "move" the message out of the Inbox, simply select the
message and click the "Archive" button.
Just be sure to put a Label on any message you Archive, otherwise
finding it later will be more difficult.
-Jim Barr
http://GmailTips.com
Jim Barr
You are correct that there is no official or easy query, but there is a
workaround. From my "Gmail Tip #22: Advanced Search - Multi-Labeled and
Un-Labeled Messages"
..."Unfortunatly, Gmail does not provide a choice in the search
dropdown that lets you search for unlabeled messages. If you manage a
large number of messages, it can be very cumbersome to determine which
messages are unlabeled. My personal preference is to ensure that all
messages have a Label making it easier to manage and organize them.
So, if you want to list all unlabeled messages, just create a long
search string containing every label that you have defined. Be sure to
include the "-" character in front of every label. This ensures that
messages with these labels will be EXCLUDED (remember, you are looking
for all messages WITHOUT Labels.) You can also optionally include the
hidden "inbox" Label to exclude anything in your Inbox.
For example, if you have defined the Labels "Family", "Friends",
"Ebay", and "Support", you would enter the following string into the
search field (note that the labels are not case sensitive) to find all
Unlabeled messaegs:
-label:inbox -label:family -label:friends -label:ebay -label:support
If you have a large number of labels, obviously, this becomes harder
and harder to manage, so I recommend reating a "note" email to yourself
containing the search string for easy future reference."