Gmail Labeling

[Ryan Kenny]

Hi there,

Copying a large email archive from Thunderbird to Gmail, and delighted to see that Larch replicated the (very extensive) folder structure using Gmail labels. 

But, I can't get the first level of sub-labels to nest properly, and now have hundreds of top-level folders of the form "INBOX/[child label name]". The '/' character normally creates a child label in Gmail, and does so for deeper nested labels, just not the top-level ones.

So, I have:

• INBOX/childlabel 1
• Child label 1.1
• Child label 1.2
• Child label 1.2.1
• Child label 1.2.2
• Child label 1.3
• INBOX/childlabel 2
• INBOX/childlabel 3
• etc.

instead of:

• INBOX:
• child label 1
• child label 1.1
• child label 1.2
• child label 1.2.1
• child label 1.2.2
• Child label 1.3
• child label 2
• child label 3
• etc.

I think this is because, in order for the labels to nest, the parent label has to exist, and Larch can't create a parent label called "INBOX" because that's reserved for system use in Gmail. Is there any way to configure Larch to avoid this? Using the to-folder option seems to lose the existing folder structure, which I would really rather avoid

[Ryan Grove]

Your suspicion is correct: while some IMAP servers allow nested folders under the inbox, Gmail doesn't. Larch tries to preserve your nesting scheme, and Gmail pretends to accept it, but it actually results in the weird results you described.

The bad news is that Larch doesn't have the ability to translate a folder name on the source to a different name on the destination, so you'll need to use another IMAP client (or Gmail itself) to rename those labels after Larch finishes copying your mail over. You should be able to just rename "INBOX/childlabel 1" to "childlabel 1", for example.

- Ryan

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "larch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to larch+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to la...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/larch.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Ryan Kenny]

Oh well, it was a long shot I suppose. Not looking forward to editing hundreds of labels one by one in Gmail - I don't suppose you know of any work-arounds that might make that a bit less painful?!

Thanks for your quick responses!

[Ryan Grove]

You could write a script to do it for you, but that'd require some programming and IMAP knowledge. I'm not sure if there are any existing tools specifically for this purpose.

Of course, since you're moving to Gmail, you could also just bite the bullet and get rid of the labels since you can now use search to find things pretty easily. But that's your call. :)

- Ryan

On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 12:53 PM, Ryan Kenny <ryan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oh well, it was a long shot I suppose. Not looking forward to editing hundreds of labels one by one in Gmail - I don't suppose you know of any work-arounds that might make that a bit less painful?!

Thanks for your quick responses!

[Ryan Kenny]

Hmm... script you say - sounds complicated. Might attempt to tinker with this http://baboumbe.blogspot.ie/2012/11/bact-rename-gmail-label-after-google.html.

Anyway, thanks for your help!