Use Labels As Folders in Gmail
When I first started to use Gmail at least a couple years ago, I wasn’t very fond of the labels. I didn’t agree with it. Might as well call them tags, because they do the same thing. Everyone is so used to folders, so calling it labels and not removing the e-mail from the inbox just confused me!
This year I began to try out labels because I was getting tired of having to delete all of my e-mails just to keep a clean inbox, and finding a specific e-mail was getting harder to do. (You can’t use search if you don’t know what you’re searching for exactly.) I also like to be organized. I’m a mess if I’m not.
I started off with a few important labels and eventually those grew to more and more because I also added more accounts to my one Gmail account.
I’ve also never been fond of the archive either. Made it sound like it was hidden forever to never be seen again. But, when you start having hundreds and hundreds of e-mails piling up in the inbox, you have no choice.
Here is how I use labels as folders in Gmail:
- Create a few basic labels. (e.g. Family, Work, Newsletters)
- Create your filters to automatically send the e-mails to the correct labels. This may take some time if you have a lot of e-mail. But, once you get it done, you won’t have to do it again. (I started from the first e-mail in my inbox and went down the list until I had none left.)
- When creating the filters, make sure to select the option for archiving so they do not show up in the inbox and also to apply the filter to all of the e-mails listed.
- Do not select any of your filters to automatically add a star next to an e-mail. Why? I use the stars to show me what e-mails I need to come back to and either read or follow-up on.
Those are just ways that I stay organized in Gmail and it saves me a lot of time, unless Gmail switches to folders! If anyone else has some other ways of using Gmail and staying organized, please share.


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