How to Sort your Mail with Labels in Gmail

Contributor

By eHow Contributing Writer

Article Rating: (5 Ratings)

If you have a Gmail account, and you’re dying to sort through and organize all your e-mails, you may have noticed that Gmail doesn’t have folders like other e-mail service providers, such as Hotmail and Yahoo!. So how can you sort your mail? With labels. Labels work a bit differently than folders, but essentially do the same thing as folders with an added feature for your convenience: you can add more than one label to a conversation or e-mail.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

A Gmail account

Create a Label by Selecting Messages First

Step 1

Select the e-mails you’d like to be labeled with the same label by checking the box next the name of each sender.
Step 2

Click the “More actions” drop-down menu near the top of your Gmail home page, and scroll down to “New label.” Click “New label.”
Step 3

Type in the name of your new label (e.g., “Friends,” “Family” or “Business”) in the text box. Click “OK.” This will categorize all the e-mails you selected under your new created label.
Step 4

Click the name of the label on the left side of your Gmail page to view all conversations/messages under that label. Alternatively, you can also perform a search.

Create a Label by Selecting Messages Later

Step 1

Scroll down to the labels section on the left side of your Gmail page.
Step 2

Select “Edit labels,” which you will find at the bottom of that section.
Step 3

Scroll down to “Create a new label.”
Step 4

Type the name of your label, and click “Create.” This will create your label.
Step 5

Go back to your messages, and select the ones you want under that label by checking the box beside them.
Step 6

Go to “More actions” and select the label you’d like to apply under “Apply label.”

Edit a Label

Step 1

Select “Edit labels” at the bottom of the “Labels” section on the left side of your Gmail page.
Step 2

Click “Rename” next the label you’d like to edit.
Step 3

Type in the new name and click “OK.” All the messages labeled with your old label name will now be labeled under the new name.

Delete a Label

Step 1

Select “Edit labels” at the bottom of the labels section on the left side of your Gmail page.
Step 2

Click “Remove label” next to the label you’d like to delete.
Step 3

Click “OK” to confirm deletion. This will not delete any messages/e-mails; only the label under which they were categorized.