Google Mail, or Gmail to most, is a wildly popular free email service. It’s fast, easy to use, and sports one of the best spam filters around.
What most people don’t quite realize is that Gmail looks at the world a little differently than most. And in doing so, it leverages something else that Google has a strong track record in: search.
Gmail labels are aren’t what most people think they are. Normally, that’s not an issue, but when accessing Gmail using a desktop email program via IMAP, it can cause a lot of confusion.
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Gmail doesn’t have folders.
Step away from your desktop email program for a moment, and look at Gmail itself, using the web interface.
What most people don’t realize is that Gmail has NO concept of “folders”. None whatsoever.
In essence, Gmail has only a single folder. A BIG bucket of email that is YOUR email. Everything. Every message sent or received, every spam, every everything.
What Gmail has instead are “labels”.
Messages in your big bucket of email can have Gmail labels. In fact they can have more than one label. What Gmail does, then, is show you what you’ve asked for based on what messages match that label. (Remember, Google is all about the search – even in Gmail.)
So when you view:
- Inbox – that means show all the messages that have the “Inbox” label
- Spam – that means show all the messages that have the “Spam” label
- Drafts – that means show all the messages that have the “Draft” label
- Trash – that means show all the messages that have the “Trash” label
“All Mail” is a special thing. It means:
- show me all the messages that don’t have the “Spam” or “Trash” labels
So it’s showing you everything that you think is worth keeping, no matter how it’s otherwise labeled.
Actions you can take then get kind of interesting.
- Mark as spam means remove the “Inbox” label and add the “Spam” label.
- Not spam means remove the “Spam” label and add the “Inbox” label.
- Archive means remove the “Inbox”, “Spam” and “Trash” labels.
- Delete means remove the “Inbox” label and add the “Trash” label.
Items with the “Spam” or “Trash” label get permanently removed automatically after something like 30 days. They go away forever.
Custom Gmail labels
You can create your own labels. Let’s say we have a label called “From Ask Leo!”. When you get a message from me, you mark it as “From Ask Leo!” (this can be automated, but for now let’s say you do it by hand, in Gmail). Thus, it has two labels: “Inbox” and “From Ask Leo!”.
Here’s the reason that I’ve laid all this out: that one message will show up in three different “places”:
- Inbox (because you did not archive it, delete it or spam it)
- All Mail (because you did not delete it or spam it)
- From Ask Leo! (because you added that label)
It looks like there are three copies. There are not. There is only one copy; one copy that shows up in three different ways because of the way it is and is not labeled.
If you use of Gmail’s web interface you might notice that there’s an icon shaped like a folder that allows you to move email out of your inbox into a folder. It’s still just Gmail using labels that look like folders. What it looks like: you have the option of labeling a message “From Ask Leo!” or putting that message into a folder called “From Ask Leo!”. The reality: when you “move” that message to a folder, you are simply removing the “Inbox” label and adding the “From Ask Leo!” label – hence you no longer see the message in your inbox. If you just add the “From Ask Leo!” label, the message keeps it’s original “Inbox” label and is still visible there.
Your Gmail applications on your phone and tablet all work using the model above. No folders, only labels. Naturally, the Gmail web
interface works this way as well.
Gmail loves “conversations”
You send an email, I reply. You reply to my reply. You cc someone. They reply to one or both of us.
As long as the subject line stays the same (and perhaps a couple of under-the-hood tracking doohickies), that’s all what Gmail and many other email services/programs call a single “conversation”.
Gmail loves conversations. When you look at email in Gmail in your browser, it groups messages into conversations by default. I think the same happens on the mobile apps as well.
Here’s the reason that it’s important: when you label something you’re typically labeling the entire conversation.
So when you “Archive” that last message you got from me about whatever, you’re actually archiving all the messages that made up that conversation. Label it as “From Ask Leo!” and in fact all the messages are labeled as such.
Trash the last? You’ve trashed them all.
Now you can turn “conversation view” off – at least in the web interface, and I suspect in the mobile interface as well. But Gmail still really likes conversation view, and it’ll still do some things in “conversation” format anyway.
I bring this up because of Gmail labels: it’s very common to think that you’re adding a label to one message when in fact you’re labeling the entire conversation.
Email programs have folders, not labels
I’m going to use “Outlook” (as in Microsoft Office’s Outlook desktop email program – completely unrelated to outlook.com) here, but the following applies to any email program that you run on your computer, and in fact to almost any email program or service that isn’t Gmail.
Outlook knows nothing about labels. It’s a totally foreign concept. Outlook has no clue. (I wish it did.)
But what it does know is folders.
This is where things get … squishy: folders are kinda sorta but not really like labels. Sorta. Maybe.
And here’s where the confusion comes in.
When you use IMAP to view your Gmail in a desktop program like Outlook, Gmail makes labels look like folders, and makes folders look like labels.
It’s a compromise, but for the most part it works.
If you have a Gmail label called “From Ask Leo!”, then chances are once you’ve synchronized Outlook you’ll have a folder called “From Ask Leo!”. In fact if you create a folder in Outlook, say “Receipts”, within the account that’s linked to Gmail, then Gmail will create a label of the same name.
“within the Gmail account”
When looking at your folder list in Outlook, it’s important to realize that the folders listed within the Gmail account correspond to labels. “Within the Gmail account” means that you’ve expanded the Gmail folder list:
Here I’ve expanded the email account “leo@somerandomservice.com”, and the folders listed within it correspond to Gmail labels. Folders you create elsewhere in Outlook do not.
Gmail labels and folder confusion
We saw that in Gmail when you have a message that is labelled as “Inbox” and “From Ask Leo!”, it’ll show up three places: under the “Inbox” label, under the the “From Ask Leo!” label, and under “All Mail”. It’s a single message that just shows up in three places.
Those three places look like three separate folders to Outlook, and thus it will download the message three times: once for “Inbox”, once for “From Ask Leo!” and once again for “All Mail”.
In Outlook you now have three separate copies of the same email.
And hopefully, by now, you understand why.
It’s not a bad thing at all. It’s not a mistake, it’s not a problem. It’s just a reflection of trying to manage two similar yet fundamentally distinct concepts with the same interface.
Using Gmail
99% of the time I ignore “All Mail”. Completely. I recommend most people do the same.
Pay attention to your inbox. Make folders/labels as you see fit within the Gmail account, and move things around – it’ll all get synchronized to Gmail, and thus will also show up on all the devices on which you access your Gmail account.
In Gmail online and in Gmail apps:
- Work mostly in your inbox.
- Use labels within the Gmail account for things you want to organize.
- Ignore All Mail unless you’re looking for something from the past.
- Delete is “move to trash” and will make the message go away completely (eventually). If you just want an email out of your Inbox, you should probably use Archive instead.
- When you find something labeled as spam that isn’t spam, mark it as “Not Spam”. Gmail will remove the spam label. add the inbox label, and (slowly) learn.
- When you find something in your inbox that is spam, mark it as spam. Gmail will add the spam label, remove the inbox label, and (slowly) learn.
When accessing your Gmail account in Outlook:
- Work mostly in your inbox.
- Use folders within the Gmail account for things you want to organize.
- Ignore All Mail unless you’re looking for something from the past.
- Delete is the equivalent of “Archive” – meaning it’ll delete the message ONLY from the folder you find it in, but it will STAY in All Mail. That is as it should be.
- When you find something in your spam folder that isn’t spam, move it to your inbox. Gmail will take that as a signal that it’s not spam and (slowly) learn.
- When you find something in your inbox that is spam, move it to your spam folder. Gmail will take that as a signal that it’s spam and (slowly) learn.
With respect to Outlook specifically, my recommendation is that you actually turn off its “junk filter”. While it’s good, it’s separate from Gmail, and I’ve seen conflict with Gmail at times. Gmail’s spam filter is plenty good on its own. I suspect that the same applies for the native junk mail filters in other desktop email programs as well.
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William De Lucia
This is a great article. It is the clearest explanation of labels and folders in gmail/email that I have ever read. Thanks, Leo.
Joy
My thoughts exactly. Gmail with MS Outlook has always been a bit of a mystery to me until now. Love Leo for always simplifying.
Chris Hughes
This is the same label convention that’s used in Opera’s email… I like it a lot.
Mike
Opera Mail has labels.
George Vaughan
Wow Leo. I have been using gmail for several years now and never realized how it set things up. Thank you ever so much for cluing us in on the difference between labels and folders. I had always thought that labels were in fact folders. What a neat way to control an email. Thanks again!
Lindsay Williams
Thanks very much for this explanation as I hadn’t realised these facts, in spite of using gmail for years.
It also helped clear up a puzzle I had over an email mass delete I perpetrated a couple of years ago!!
Lester
Outlook search folders act somewhat like Gmail’s labels. I have a search folder that shows me all my follow-up flagged email. I have a search folder that shows me only emails from and to my supervisor. I have other search folders that show me only email from other people or with other criteria. Of course, I use folders too, and the search folders will pull from various folders if you want. So I can have emails from my supervisor in three or four different folders but find them all in my supervisor search folder. The emails themselves stay where I have stored them, but like the Gmail labels, I can gather together email from one person or one subject and view them together. Along with this, you can setup and use Outlook categories, which are a lot like Gmail labels as well. So I have a half dozen search folder and a half dozen categories. This allows me to mix and match pretty well any kind of scenario you can imagine. For instance, I use my followup folder to store important task or people related emails, then I sort them by category within that folder. All the while, the email stays in my inbox.
Michtrixie
Great article about Gmail! I’ve been using it for years and this is the best explanation I’ve ever read. Also, I like that you can delete an individual message from a conversation by clicking the down arrow to the right of the message you want to delete and choosing, “Delete this message.” Only that message goes to the trash and the rest of the conversation remains. Thanks!
butch / Texas
I only use G-Mail. The problem I had/have is when I forward or reply to a message. One is I can’t figure out how to change the subject line. The other problem is when I do forward/reply the message would just go away and no longer be in my inbox. After months I finally found them in All mail. If I want to keep in inbox I have to send it back and sometimes that does not work. I miss Yahoo mail but after they went to adds everywhere mode I finally just gave up. Another example of ruining a good thing over greed. Take care
Leo
To change the subject line click the funny looking arrow thing to the left of the TO: address. One of the options there will be “Edit Subject”.
Tony2
Reason your message might disappear from the Inbox when you Reply or Forward – you may be accidentally clicking the “Send & Archive” button instead of just “Send”. You can go to Settings and hide that option.
Abhishek
Dear All,
I have label with name “project” Ex:- all mail’s from Ask leo is filtered in label “Project” but when i open the mail it shows two label like “Project Update”. But i want to show label only project not update.
But how this possible.
Tony2
Do you have category tabs switched on? “Updates” is one of the available categories and perhaps you’re seeing both the label and category tag attached to some incoming emails.
Brad
I’m still a bit confused. According to the article, labelling things in my inbox doesn’t remove them from the inbox, but moving them to a category (which is really the same as a label) does remove it from the inbox.
1) So, why would I ever want to just label something and have it stay in my inbox, piling up with the rest of the messages?
2) Also, what is the difference between archiving and deleting? I’ve been deleting messages since I started with gmail, seven years ago, and they’re still there.
3) If I create a filter to label all messages from someone with the same label, and then I archive those messages when I receive them, is that the same as moving them to that category (errr… label)?
4) What’s the best way to organize a label taxonomy/hierarchy?
Leo
1) You probably wouldn’t. I label things and then archive them – which just removes them from the inbox. That way I can easily find them by label again later.
2) Deleting should actually delete after 30 days. Are you sure you’re deleting?
3) Archiving simply removes the inbox label.
4) no general answer to that – it REALLY depends on how you use your email. I just went through a cleanup on one of my accounts that acts as a front end for a number of other email accounts (my life is complicated 🙂 ) and settled on labels for most of the email addresses on which I receive email, and then a couple for specific email addresses that send me email. But that’s just me.
Alex
Great article. Thank you. I was trying to figure out how best to set up filters and rules and decided to first set filters to auto label incoming email that I wanted out of inbox and grouped into a folder in Gmail. Then it automatically was moved into that folder in Outlook. I found this article and it helped me make sense of it all. Also how to rid myself of the awful conversations style. Its been pestering me for years. Thank you for this article to guide me back to sanity….
Kim
I’m sorry but I still can’t figure out how to make a new folder or label or whatever you want to call it in my gmail email account. Help!!!
Lynn Fischer
I imported yahoo folders from my yahoo.com email to my new gmail.com and it created labels and that was fine. But when I get a new email into my gmail address and I want to move it to one of my labels I get a great number of xxx@yahoo.com (not my full address) places to move it to. These aren’t in my “regular” gmail labels. How do I remove these from my gmail move to button.
Charlotte Sinclaire
This article on labels vs. folders was just what I needed today. I knew that Outlook looked at labels and created folder equivalents, but I was concerned about synching back and forth after managing labels and/or folders, and your article cleared this up for me nicely. Thanks very much!
nicole rafter
In gmail, after I archive a sent message, why does it stay in my sent mailbox instead of deleting itself?
Also, how can I keep “Sent mail” on my gmail homepage; I don’t want to have to type “Sent” in the Search bar every time I want to see what I sent.
Thanks,
NR
Tom S
Great article. Two questions. On my iPhone I see the labels Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Junk (looks like a bucket with and x on it, Trash, All Mail, [Gmail] grayed out, Important (nested under [Gmail] and Starred (also nested) and then Junk E-mail (looks like a folder). The questions are what does the grayed out [Gmail] mean and the nesting below and then why are there two Junk labels. Thanks
Leo
I believe the folders nested under the Gmail label are the actual folders on the Gmail servers, while the other folders are local to the email program that you are running on your iPhone.
Bob Stromberg
One hypothesis I have is that almost everything on an iPhone is done through an app. For Gmail, there are at least two possible apps: Apple’s built-in Mail app and Google’s Gmail app. I would not expect them to act the same way at all, at all. Google and Apple are like oil and water — both liquids, both useful, but they mix in surprising ways.
So, for any question relating to a iOS (or Android) device, the first thing to make clear is what app are you using? On iOS, double-press the Home button, and the name of the apps will appear on top of the thumbnails in the app-switching interface.
Holly Beck
This was a really helpful article. However, I have an additional question I need help with.
For years, I have had my Gmail imported in to Outlook. Then something weird happened and it will no longer come in – I keep getting error messages.
So…I have been accessing it directly from Gmail.
If I delete the Gmail account on Outlook – will anything happen to all of Gmail or will it all still be safe within Gmail?
I thought maybe I could delete the account on Outlook and reinstall it – and hopefully it will work. BUT – I don’t want to chance losing my emails.
Leo
It depends on HOW you have it configured in Outlook. I’d do this: disconnect your computer from the network, then delete the account from Outlook. Confirm that all is well online and on yoru PC, and then reconnect.
Emma-Lee
Wow that was so helpful! Thank you! Clears a lot up! I’m wondering, is there a way to only see all the emails that are ‘archived’ that don’t have any other labels attached to them? So that I can select them, move them into a ‘to sort’ folder/label on my mail client, and then actually delete into trash what needs to be deleted rather than just pressing delete and moving it into ‘archive’?
Lea
Hi
Great article. Made it a little bit more clear for me.
I am trying to use Outlook on Windows 10 for Gmail.
I’ve succeeded to get all my mail into outlook but the labels doesn’t get added into outlook.
I have enabled IMAP in gmail.
Is there a way to fix this? What am I doing wrong?
Leo
Outlook the stand-alone program? Or Outlook.com, the web site? (Or perhaps the “Mail” program in Windows 10?)
Dilip Kumar
We saw that in Gmail when you have a message that is labelled as “Inbox” and “From Ask Leo!”, it’ll show up three places: under the “Inbox” label, under the the “From Ask Leo!” label, and under “All Mail”. It’s a single message that just shows up in three places.
HOW TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. I WANT IT TO BE SHOWN ONLY IN “From Ask Leo!” label
Leo
It’s not a problem. It’s how Gmail works.
Greg Wyard
Hi Leo,
I have a question about sent mail in gmail.
I read your article with great interest, and now understand that gmail uses 4 labels inbox, spam, drafts and trash to categorize emails and these end up in the corresponding folders in Mac mail.
I also understand that sent mail is not a label, but rather uses a filter to show all the emails sent with my name in the sent field.
My question is – if I have a non-Google email address that is redirected to gmail, how do I prevent email sent to this address from going to my sent mail box when it reaches me (since it picks up my name as the sender when it gets forwarded, and thinks I sent it). I only want it to show up in my inbox.
e.g. I give out my email address as {removed}@mycompany.com and have mycompany.com redirect it to {removed}@gmail.com.
Now I have the problem that all the mail sent to {removed}@mycompany.com appears correctly in my inbox, but because it is then sent on to {removed}@gmail.com, Google sees the sender as me ({removed}@mycompany.com) and also puts it in my sent mail.
I only want to see emails I have sent in Sent mail, not ones that have been redirected to me from other people.
Does that make sense?
Greg Wyard
Connie (Team Leo)
I run my own domain’s email through my Gmail account. Once I set it up so that I could send from my exterior address Gmail just figured it out and all my sent emails show in the Sent folder. So, I think it just works.
ennazus
I’m still confused. I originally wanted to know how to move a message into a gmail folder err…label and I must need some of those braincells I lost in my 20ies because I don’t know where to put something I would like to retrieve. I’m thinking I should not delete anything, rather archive it all. Why would someone have just regular labels (or folders) if you didn’t want to keep it and look at it from anywhere?
Also…simply, if I delete an email on my phone in gmail, does it delete it on my computer?
I think I have to re-re-rerereally reread this.
Mark Jacobs (Team Leo)
I’m not sure what you are trying to do in the first part of the question.
Deleting an email from your GMail account on your phone will delete it from the server. That’s how IMAP works. It synchronizes the emails between the email provider’s server and your email programs and vice versa.
Bala
We’ve recently moved to Gmail to host our work mail IDs and use Outlook 2016 as the client through the IMAP protocol. However, I’m encountering a problem for which I’m wondering if you’ll be able to help. On Outlook, I’ve created a whole bunch of message rules, all of which work well when I’m downloading new mails. However, should I have read some of those mails on my phone, for instance, these mails go directly into Inbox on Outlook, bypassing all message rules that have been created. Will this challenge be overcome if I were to have created labels and filters directly on Gmail, as opposed to creating them on Outlook? Your inputs will help.
Connie (Team Leo)
Yes. You would need to create those rules directly on Gmail. Otherwise the rules are only being applied on the computer running Outlook. Keep in mind that Gmail does not have the same concept of folders that Outlook does. So very often, no matter what you do, things will show differently on a phone than they do on a computer running Outlook.
This article may help you sort that out: https://askleo.com/how-do-gmail-labels-relate-to-folders/
Britta
I use Apple MAIL with GMAIL and IMAP and I’m wondering how keep MAIL from storing my emails in my home library and taking up 20 GBs.
Also, can I ARCHIVE email that I don’t want in my INBOX… Or can I LABEL it without storing it on my computer? I have an SSD hard drive and limited space. Or is using GMAIL’s web interface the only way not to take up space on my computer? The endless attachments really take up way too much space.
Thanks so much! I feel like I’m finally beginning to understand after years of using MAIL with GMAIL and IMAP.
– B
Phil Green
Thanks Leo, you have shed some light on the gmail mystery!
Cold you go further and explain how subscribe works especially in relation to synchronizing my GMail folders (labels) between devices.
I have Outlook 365 on several devices – home, work and laptop plus gmail on a phone. Outlook mail is my main work mail and I have moved to gmail for my personal and new business mail (setup within outlook) . The problem is I didn’t understand how gmail worked so went about it as I did Outlook setting up complex folder structures for each category of gmail.
The problem I have now is the folders aren’t all synchronizing between each device. I am wondering if I need to subscribe each folder that I want to synchronize? But given each device now has a different gmail folder (label) structure how do I get them to all be the same?
At the moment it seems a real struggle and a backwards step going to gmail but am keen to persevere if I can.
David English
Leo, great article, very enlightening.
I have a problem resulting from moving many folders and sub-folders (over 30) from the [Gmail] folder, to another folder (GO) at the same level in Thunderbird. But now there are significant discrepancies between the number of messages counted and visible in my online gmail account for the relevant labels. For instance, “GO\FR-Ntwkg\SWFL – TIM” has 254 messages, but the online gmail label “go-fr-ntwkg-swfl—tim” only has 208 messages. Similarly, the “GO\Website” folder has 573 messages, but the only gmail label “go-website” only has 431 messages.
What gives? Is this related to conversations by any chance? Or are this many messages missing online? If so, how can I fix it? I moved the folders in Thunderbird over 24 hours ago and nothing has update since then.
Thanks for nay help.
Email Jebus
Sounds like conversations. Try double-checking by turning off Conversation View in Gmail settings – message number should become equal on both sides. If that happens, you can turn Conversation View back on, while being sure all messages are there!
Tahmid Shahid
Hi, I moved an important email of mine from trash to Promotions document. Now when I went to Promotions, I couldn’t find my email and can’t find it in All Mail either. I really need that email and it would be very kind if you could suggest me ways to find it. Thank you.
Connie (Team Leo)
If you are using Gmail then the easiest thing to do is to use the search function. Just type something from the email in the search box at the top of the page and, if it’s available, Gmail will find it.
James friley
Whe I make up a mail account imap on my iPad the server for imap is never found is it because the iPad it’s self has no server?.
Leo
Typically it’s because you’ve specified the wrong server for your email service.
Gwyneth Llewelyn
Wonderful explanation! I mostly use Apple Mail (mostly because Gmail does not allow [yet] to use digital certificates for signing or even encrypting messages) and I tended to duplicate the filters on both Gmail and Apple Mail, which lead to some complications — in fact, what usually happened was that I had the filters out of sync and got confused about where the messages would end up 🙂 Apple Mail also shows the Gmail labels-turned-into-folders but there is a slight inconsistency in the Apple Mail layout: you do get all the labels-turned-into-folders in a separate structure below the Mailboxes section except for the ‘main’ inbox — which appears inside the Mailboxes section. Fortunately, Gmail also has an Important label-as-folder, and this does appear correctly, but… it may be the case that one message appears that is neither in the Important label, nor in any of the others, and that means scrolling up and down on the Apple Mail sidebar to make sure you caught all of the messages.
The ‘fault’ is Apple’s, of course. I also have non-Gmail IMAP accounts set up on Apple Mail, and the same happens: the ‘main’ folder appears under the Mailboxes section, all the IMAP folders (except for ‘main’) appear on their own section. This is really Apple’s interface design issue which makes it very easy to fail to keep track of some messages, especially if you have a lot of different accounts to keep track of, each with several labels (on Gmail) or automatic folders for filtering (on other IMAP providers) — which is my case, in my eternal fight to reduce mailbox junk to manageable levels (and, yes, ‘status notifications’ from services I’ve subscribed are also ‘junk’ for my purposes — things that usually do not need my immediate attention! — even though they are perfectly legitimate messages which I want to receive). One way that Google could help is to create an automatic label-as-folder called ‘Unfiltered’ or even ‘Unimportant’ as a sort of catch-all filter for all messages that have not been labeled in any way. Maybe such a rule can even be done on Gmail’s Settings — I have not tried!
Mark Findlay
I have a problem in that folders created in MS outlook 2013 don’t show up in gmail or in Bluemail on my phone. As I compose mostly in Outlook this causes chaos because then I can’t find the equivalent in gmail. This seems to be broken. How do i fix it (sorry no techspeak; I don’t care if it’s a label or a folder, I just want it to work).
Shaun Clarke
Just wanted to take the time to say thanks for the article. I’ve had Gmail for ages (Android phone) but only recently started using it more. This article really helped me understand these concepts after I discovered some of this the hard way after thinking I had duplicate messages and trying to “fix” it lol.
Fred Garvin
Thank you for the article. I’m no longer confused by the way Gmail works although it seems the only reason they turned years of common computer terminology and convention on its head is TO be different. If only they had the option to “Make labels function as folders” when accessing it via a browser it would be tolerable. Changing the names of things that represent a physical place like Inbox and Trash to something like received and deleted might also be helpful.
Leo
Google definitely likes to do things Google’s way. The “problem” with labels is that they actually make a LOT of sense when used in isolation (like only via Gmail’s interface). It’s when interfacing with other email programs and mindsets that things get really confusing really quickly. Thanks!