Google's Gmail service defines itself as an innovative and intuitive method of organizing your emails. One of the most useful features of Gmail are labels. Labels are very similar to blog post tags. They allow you to quickly access and sort related information. Unlike folder-organized systems, where each file or message can only be placed in one folder, you can apply more than one label to a message, thus creating more than one reference to it. This article walks you through the basic steps of managing labels on Gmail.
Steps
Method 1 of 7: Create a Gmail Account
Step 1. Open a Gmail account or log into your existing account at
Method 2 of 7: Choose the Labels
Step 1. Click on the empty boxes next to each Gmail conversation to which you would like to add a label or for which you want to edit it
A check mark should appear in each box.
Method 3 of 7: Add a New Label
Step 1. Click the "Labels" button in your Gmail toolbar
A drop-down menu will open.
Step 2. Choose a label
Use one of the predefined labels (Work, Personal, Receipts, Travel) or select "Create New" to insert a new one. When you have selected a label, it will be applied to all selected conversations. Any new labels you have created will be available in the "Labels" drop-down menu if you want to use them in the future, in addition to the default ones.
Method 4 of 7: Remove the Labels
Step 1. Select a conversation with a label
Step 2. Click the "Labels" button in the Gmail toolbar
Step 3. Click on the checked box next to the label you would like to remove
Step 4. Select "Apply"
Method 5 of 7: Change or Remove Labels
Step 1. Access the label you would like to change or remove from the drop-down menu on the left side of the Gmail page
If the tag you are looking for does not appear as a link to follow, you will find it under "(#) others", where (#) is the number of additional tags that are not displayed.
Step 2. Click the down arrow to the left of the label
A menu will open that will allow you to hide, rename or delete the labels. You can also use this menu to color the labels.
Method 6 of 7: View the Labels
Step 1. Use the "Hide" option, which you can find in the drop-down menu of labels to the left of each entry, to remove the labels from the default list you display and hide them in the "(#) other" entry
This way you won't hide labels in Gmail conversations.
Step 2. Click and drag the hidden tags under "(#) others" to redisplay them in the list
Method 7 of 7: Manage the Labels
Step 1. Manage a large number of labels by clicking the "Labels" button in the Gmail toolbar and then selecting "Manage Labels"
This will open a menu where you can view all the labels you have created, with "Hide" and "Show" buttons next to each of them. Most labels will also have a "Remove" button next to them, and you can edit them by right clicking on their name. {
Advice
- On Gmail, email messages exchanged between you and another person are grouped together. These collections of related emails are called a conversation, and a label attributed to a message in the conversation will be applied to the entire conversation.
- Note that there are predefined "System Labels" that are used to sort your messages and cannot be removed. These include, Inbox, Sent Messages and Drafts.
