How Do Gmail Labels Relate to Folders?

Confusingly

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.

Labels & Folders in Gmail

Gmail uses what it calls labels instead of folders to organize email. All email in your Gmail account is stored in a single, large bucket but categorized using multiple different labels. This system can cause confusion when you access Gmail using desktop email programs like Outlook, which interprets labels as folders, typically leading to duplicated messages across different ‘folders’.

Gmail doesn’t have folders.

Step away from your desktop email program for a moment, and look at Gmail itself, using the web interface at gmail.com.

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”.

Gmail has labels

Messages in your big bucket of email can have what Gmail calls labels. In fact they can have more than one label. What Gmail shows 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 (The inbox label is normally not shown in the em
• 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.

But, not to belabor the point: those aren’t folders. They’re labels.

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Custom Gmail labels

You can create your own labels. Let’s say we have a label called “Ask Leo!”. When you get a message from me, you mark it as “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)
• 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.

(Animation: askleo.com)

You have the option of labeling a message “Ask Leo!” or moving that message into the label called “Ask Leo!”.

• If you only add the label, the email stays in your inbox, but has the “Ask Leo!” label added to it.
• If you drag and drop the email to the label in the left hand pane, that message has the “Ask Leo!” label added to it, but also has the “Inbox” label removed.

The reality: when you “move” that message to what looks like a folder, you are simply removing the “Inbox” label and adding the “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.

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 “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 on your PC, and makes folders on your PC look like labels in the email account.

It’s a compromise, but for the most part it works.

If you have a Gmail label called “Ask Leo!”, then chances are once you’ve synchronized Outlook you’ll have a folder called “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.

Gmail labels and folder confusion

We saw that in Gmail when you have a message that is labelled as “Inbox” and “Ask Leo!”, it’ll show up three places: under the “Inbox” label, under the the “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 separate times: once for “Inbox”, once for “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 necessarily a bad thing, 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

If you’re using a desktop email program to access your email regularly, then 99% of the time I recommend ignoring “All Mail”. Completely.

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.