GMail: The Backlash?

Move only works for the page of mails you're on.
So if you're trying to move stuff within 100s / 1000s of mails, no good.

Will try Archive again.

selecting the emails and labelling them and archiving them will remove them from the inbox

I think, to do what you're trying to do, you need to filter so that you can apply a new label to the messages, then archive so they get taken out of the inbox. The whole point of Google mail though is that you do your partitioning via searching so you never actually need to move anything out of the inbox.

pinefox, there is no such thing as a folder.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=118708

you can label messages but they appear with those labels either in the inbox or in the archives (to be found by searching).

xpost: ... surprised by your last claim -- you mean it's OK to have an Inbox with 1000s of mails?

Don't think I want that - though I have had it for years now!

I would have thought that 'partitioning' was via labels?

Think Conrad's statement, above, is correct, have just tried it.

I currently have 10,000+ emails in my inbox; whenever I want a particular email, I search for a keyword. I could be more organized and label everything; then, I could filter down using label selection before doing keyword searches. I have exactly zero problems with my mail.

everything in my inbox

i have set up filters that automatically label almost everything coming in

then i archive them; my inbox has like a dozen messages in it

/anal

See I like to only have things in my inbox that I haven't replied to or need to do something about.

I'm happy enough with everything else just being in the Archive though.

The Archiving thing did work

only one drawback - it only archives 20 things at a time

so if you have 100s of that thing it takes a while

pf - there should be a checkbox at the top of the page that will include everything rather than just the page you can see.

Oh!!

... no, don't think I see that, Fizzles.

I can see 'All' but I think that just means what's on the page?

yes search results will display only 20 emails (or "conversations") BUT

you can click the box that selects all the emails on that page and they all go a shade darker - at this point there appears an option at the top of the list that offers to select all that march the search. "All 20 conversations on this page are selected. Select all conversations that match this search"

yes. I THINK this has worked ...

just confused cos a search found 150 convos

then once I did the check and archive all thing

there were only about 20 of them, in the archived folder!!

don't give up PF

hm, I don't think it's working out.

stuff that goes to the archive is not going to the folders / labels, even though it's labelled.
It's just going into a massive searchable limbo.

basically, don't think there is any way to do, what I really want to do.

pity.

if you label as the first step before you archive they will go into that label/folder

I did, every time !!

I think that only Move To will put something in a folder

and, again, there is no Move To from Search

no

had another idea.

if you can look at mails sorted by sender, rather than by date -- then you could at least go through ticking a load of them, and then Move them.

can you do that, sorting by sender thing, under Settings maybe?

http://pic.phyrefile.com/b/bl/blind_io/2011/05/12/michael-jackson-thriller-eating-popcorn-animated.gif

OK, to simplify:

gmail does not have folders. It keeps everything in a giant clump of email behind the scenes. It has "labels" that you can apply to messages, including multiple labels per message.

"inbox" is actually a label of sorts, and has a few special features. That's why there's a "move to inbox" button, and the default view is the "inbox" label.

All "Archive" really does is remove the "inbox" label.

So if you want to tag, say, all correspondence with a certain company as "ilxor" you would either create a filter to automatically move them on receipt, and/or do a search and then label all resulting messages and then archive them.

I have no idea why the hell Dan has everything in the inbox still.

Because I don't need to organize anything in my email to find it?

In that case, how is what you're doing any different from archiving every single message?

... it isn't?

I was just thinking that you could actually use the Inbox for something, rather than having it be the same as the All Mail section! At the very least, the page would load a little faster.

All my email is "in" the inbox and it loads instantly.

I use "skip inbox" on all my filters then stuff I care about is automatically archived and labelled while everything else languishes in the inbox till I get round to trawling it.

Gmail is marking some stuff as "important" which is sometimes helpful as it's prompted me to set a couple of new filters.

Yeah I have labels (folders whatever) for everything - a ton of stuff that comes in, I just dont want to see most of the time, daily updates for the TV guide, real estate classifieds, that kinda thing. It gets in the way of the mail I do want to read so its set to be labelled and archived immediately. The inbox is left for personal emails, and that way I see them easily.

Also, in my perception at least, clicking into a label folder to find someone's message seems faster than searching for it, but I rarely use the search function so I cant be too sure.

You must be a big TV watcher!

Thats the funny thing, I dont watch TV at all anymore!

Gmail: question.

How can I set it so when I'm reading a mail and delete it, the screen shows the next mail down, rather than goes back to the Inbox?

can't find any info about this.

Go to 'Labs' under 'Settings' and enable 'Auto-advance'.

Fed up with reading a long email, clicking delete at the bottom of the screen, then when I go back to the inbox I'm at the bottom of the page there (I don't filter or sort anything, so there's a 100 emails on the page). Sure this never used to happen.

Thank you, JM, this did work!

what is this new list of names appearing on the right hand side of my window?

it's a new thing but has somehow pushed me over the edge. gmail used to be so slick and now about 30% of the screen is actually taken up by the emails i want to the read and the rest by toolbars, buttons, gadgets and adverts. can barely ever load the site on my netbook. i want to ditch it.

are there any alternatives ppl recommend?

can you maybe do the thing where you load it as HTML, the way it offers you an opportunity to when it's slow loading ..?

what is this new list of names appearing on the right hand side of my window?

? I don't see this

when you're composing an e-mail (/reply?), it brings up the little gang of people involved, i think in case you want to make them into a new tight-knit-friend-group in +

i could use the HTML version but i'm still interested in alternatives. there must be some new super slick lightweight webmail surely?

this new list of names is called "People" ?

it tells you what it is first time you see it, seems a pretty dece feature compared to most of the new stuff lately imo

anyway you can turn off most of whatever you don't want in the settings, and for everything else there's browser add-ons like:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oddhbkghjoccbljmagcgoklbfdjeiinb

it offers five random people off the internet you might want to e-mail

it's all the people in the conversation you're looking at?

it's been offering me not not only people that have nothing to do with the convo - but also the last people i would want involved.

it's a way to one-up facebook, where it doesn't only reunite you with friends, but reconcile you with people you've chosen to forget. spare a thought + cc those people.

if you're getting new stuff then you might be in the group that Google+ is getting rolled out to

I noticed you cant make a gmail account now without giving your phone number to them

I don't mind that, because it makes me think that somehow I'm more likely to get my account back if it's hijacked.

Probably not, but hey, small comfort

My impression of Australia is the whole country is sharing one asymmetric DSL connection that goes to Singapore and they each pay $89 a month for it

xxpost - I don't know if it was something with my settings, but several years ago my Gmail started appearing pre-screened into three tabs at the top - Primary, Promotions and Social. For the most part it does a pretty good job of sorting my incoming mail into the appropriate tabs, although I have had to do a little "training" for newsletters and such. I'm sure there's some setting for this, but I'm actually okay with it and I didn't do anything intentional to set up these tabs, they just showed up. The Promotions tab is the only one that had the embedded ads.

that sounds like a nightmare to me. if gmail had any advertising at all i would be gone immediately.

Yeah I've had the tab setup on the browser gmail for a few years, it happened automatically. Yes it has embedded ads but it also segregates useless promotional emails with a pretty high degree of accuracy (I also train it sometimes). Makes gmail an better experience overall, most days I don't even open the Promotions tab. In the app version, I use the Primary view, where Promotions is not a tab but they show up grouped together at the top of my email, which is slightly more annoying than the browser version

I have several Gmail accounts and only one of them has that "promotions" tab and only one or two emails ever get sent there. Usually they're notifications from Zoom or something stupid like that.

I think they offered me the promotions 'upgrade' a couple of years ago, I declined and they haven't asked me since.

The Promotions tab is great. Filters out all the offer emails from companies you've purchased from in the past etc

Very easy to quickly scan through the list to see if there's anything of interest and then bulk delete them.

It's fine, I'm sure it could be better but it's just frickin email and I don't care enough to change, though I'm sure there are better alternatives

it's super easy to customize / remove the tabs in gmail!

The Promotions tab is great. Filters out all the offer emails from companies you've purchased from in the past etc

Very easy to quickly scan through the list to see if there's anything of interest and then bulk delete them.

exactly! Recently I had to go through a bunch of emails on an old work computer where I was using MS Outlook (ah the days of configuring POP3 settings ...) and realized that having to sort through a bunch of promotional email from like Office Depot and gig announcements for concerts in places I will never go ... that used to be a major part of "my email lyfe" and now ... promotions tab + forums tab -- not any more.

Also! Also! being able to have multiple gmail account inboxes show in the app ... I think that was my technology excitement of the month when I figured that out tbh