How to manage all your mail in Gmail: Filters, Labels, multiple Id’s and even Backups

Gmail says “Search, don’t Sort” and by all means this is a good idea and they also tell you not to ever delete a message again, which is interesting, at least for the messages that have any value.

But if you do this you probably have copious amounts of email in a single archive and while sorting is not the solution, Labels and Filters can give you a hand with all this.

If you Manage all your emails accounts in Gmail then for sure you need further help by now to manage you gather-all Gmail account.

In either case, you might find useful to use Labels to organize them as or need a second Gmail account as .

This post will explain

1. Why search is better than sort
2. How to set labels
3. How to use filters
4. How to use Filters to set Labels as suggested by Peter Cruickshank (See comment)
5. How to use handle multiple Gmails accounts as suggested by Pramod (see his comment)
6. As a bonus I even tell you how to deal with server backups sent by mail to you

Search don’t sort

The first thing to keep in mind is that Gmail philosophy is “Search, don’t sort”, meaning that instead of organizing mail in folders as soon as you read it, you could search it afterwards when you need it.

Why searching is better that sorting? I would say it is for three reasons.

1. The first one is that it is just too hard to know in advance what kind of organizing system you will need in a year time, sometimes even in a month time.

   If you have a powerful search system you don’t need to think of this, you will only worry about it when you need to find that archived email.

2. The second one is that in traditional mail archives you can only sort an email in one folder. You might have a folder “Funnies” and a folder “Mom”, and you will have to decide either time where to put the funnies your mom sends you.

   Also you have to be consistent, because as your archive grows it will be hard to know where that funny your Mom sent you was archived in.

3. The third one is that periodically, as your archive grows, you need to re-sort all your mail. One thing is to have a “Funnies” folder with twenty messages, a completely different beast to tame is a “Funnies” folder with a thousand messages.

   And then when you re-organize your archive the original problem arises, how would you do it? Would you organize it by sender (Funnies-Mom, Funnies-John, Funnies-Paul,…), by theme…

Search instead of sorting allows you to refine the granularity of your classification on the very moment you need it and through the criteria just pop in your mind at the moment.

Yes, a good search system is really hard to build! But, hey, that is what Google is famous for being good at, so let’s trust them and move along.

Labels: Just like folders but with search properties

A label in Gmail is pretty much a predefined search.

You can find a Labels box in the sidebar on the left, in green, just below the “Quick Contacts” section.

Say you frequently search for email your Mom sent you, well, you can create a label Mom and tag all email from her with this label.

To do this you first create the label by clicking “Edit labels” on the bottom of the box. A management interface appears with a form in the bottom that reads “Create a new label”. Just fill in the name you want for your label and hit “Create”.

To apply label to a particular message, you can select the message(s) either with the checkbox in a list view or just opening the message for reading and select from the upper menu “More actions…” » “Apply Label: Mom”.

If later you want to search for messages labeled “Mom” just click on the appropriate name in the Labels list on the sidebar.

So far so good! Seems great, but this is not anything better that having folders and is not much different that sorting. Indeed, is not, but stick with me because now things will start to get really interesting.

Say you have another label: “Funnies”. Your mom sends you a funny, which label to put? Both!

Now you find that particular mail when you select the “Mom” label and also when you select the “Funnies” label.

Now, selecting each label for each message by hand, like this, is a terrible annoyance and it is hard to make an extense use of them. What you can do is to set up some filters to automate this all.

Gmail Filters: Automate your decisions

Once you have a clear rule of what has to be done with incoming (and outgoing) email, a filter is a handy way to let Gmail perform the actions for you.

In our example, each email you recieve from you “Mom” will be tagged with the label Mom. Moreover, all mail sent to your mother will be tagged too.

Piece of cake. Go to “Settings” on the top-right menu and then select “Filters”. On the bottom you’ll find a link “Create a new filter”.

A filter is composed of two parts. In the first one you define the select criteria. That is, which messages the filter will be applied to. In the second part you define what to do with the messages that match the criteria defined in the first part.

In this case, we want to select the messages sent from and to mom@mommail.com, so we need two filters: one for incoming and one for outgoing mail.

[The search criteria for a filter allows you to enter information for the field "from:" and field "to:", but keep in mind that you if you specify both as mom@mommail.com you will only select messages that are both from and to you mom, and not messages that either from or to her. That is why we need two filters.]

On the first filter we put mom@mommail.com on the field “from:” and click “Next step»”. On the second part select “Apply Label” and select “Mom”, then click “Create Filter”. Now all incoming mail from you Mom will be automatically tagged.

To tag also the outgoing mail create another filter. Put mom@mommail.com in the “To:” filter and then chose “Apply label: Mom” on the second step. Done! All email from and to your Mom will be tagged.

Well, this is all nice and cool, but not beyond the basic use of it. Now we mastered Labels and Filters let’s move to three uses that can really be handy.

Label mail if you Manage all your email accounts with Gmail

If you use Gmail to manage all your email accounts then you have managed to gather all your mail to a very handy and powerful interface. Now you might want to classify your incoming mail depending on where it was originally sent to.

For each account create a label with an appropriate name, something like “myoriginalmail@myserver.com” should be good enough.

Then, for each acount create two filters. One for incoming and one for outgoing mail.

For incoming mail, in the first part use your original email address (myoriginalmail@oldserver.com) on the “To:” field. On the second part, select the appropriate label.

For outgoing mail, in the first part use your original email address (myoriginalmail@oldserver.com) on the “From:” field. On the second part, select the appropriate label (remember that you can select which email identity to use when writing an email).

Now, every message received or sent is labeled accordingly depending of the specific account it was used.

Sending email to different Gmail Accounts

Some people like to have more than one Gmail account, or sometimes they need to.

In my opinion having two email accounts is a great hassle and is better to avoid when possible, that is why I manage all my email on one account in the first place, but, if you need to have more than one, it is better to organize well.

As far as I can see, with all the organizational resources we have discussed here, the only reason to have multiple Gmail accounts is lack of space. If a second (or third, or fourth…) account is needed to store your mail I would chose between two policies.

• Use a Gmail account until it fills, then move to another
• Use different Gmail accounts different uses (ie, work, personal, blog)

In my opinion, a nice solution is:

1. Send all your mail to a main Gmail account
2. Set up filters to redirect selected mail to other accounts

If you are filling one account at a time and moving to another, the solution is fairy simple, you just have to set a forward rule, that is an especial kind of filter even easier to configure.

A main account is a good idea even if you are filling one account at a time, because that is the only place you ever need to reconfigure as your needs grow. You can send all your mail to this account and give this address to friends, even if you check your mail through another account.

1. Go to Settings » “Forwarding and POP” » Forward
2. Check the option to forward email
3. Fill in the email you want your email redirected to
4. Select “Delete Gmail’s copy” From the drop down menu.
5. Save Changes

One day your secondary account will be full. Go to Go to :Settings » Forwarding and POP » Forward” and edit your filter so mail is forwarded to a third account you should have.

If instead, you are forwarding mail according to some criteria you can set a specific filter for redirecting mail to specific accounts.

To make it simple, let’s say have 3 different Gmail accounts for different purposes:

One for work

All mail that comes from domains myworkdomain.com is considered work and goes to myworkemail@gmail.com

One for your blog

Yes, you have a blog and all email the server sends to you has the string [myblog] on the subject. For instance “[myblog] Please moderate post X”. All mail from your blog should go to myblogemail@gmail.com

One for all the rest

Finally, you have an email for all the rest and in this case it is just easier to use the main account for that.

So, we need to set up two filters to handle this.

For the first one, we must filter all the email coming from work.

1. Go to Settings » Filters » “Create a new filter”
2. Put “*@myworkdomain.com” on the “From:” field and press “Next»” (The asterisk means “all”)
3. Check “Forward it to:” and put the email address on the form (myworkemail@gmail.com in the example)
4. Check also “Delete it” so it doesn’t remain on your original mailbox.
5. Create Filter

For the second one, we must filter all email coming from your blog

1. Go to Settings » Filters » “Create a new filter”
2. Put “[myblog]” on the “subject” field and press “Next»”
3. Check “Forward it to:” and put the email address on the form (myblogemail@gmail.com in the example)
4. Check also “Delete it” so it doesn’t remain on your original mailbox.
5. Create Filter

You can also set up your secondary emails to send email as your original identity

Receiving backup files from your server

As a last example here, I will describe how I manage the backup from my blog.

Once a day an hour, z-oc.com emails me a backup of the database using this plugin. I like this policy because if anything happens to the site, no matter how serious, I have a complete database backup outside the site, and no better place for this than my Gmail.

The email comes always with a very specific Subject and Text and also has an attachment, so it is easy to make a filter for it.

As I first idea I might want to apply a label “Database Backup” to all those messages. Also I never have to even look at these messages unless something happens to the site, so I can also archive then by default.

Even if something happens with the site, I only need the last one, so I can go to “All Mail” and retrieve the last one.

This filter will work well but still you would have to periodically select all messages labeled “Database backup” and delete all but the last, but there is a better solution.

All email deleted in Gmail goes to the trash bin and remains there for a month before it is automatically deleted forever. So, why not send the backup straight to the trash by applying a “Delete it” rule to the filter?

If nothing happens, gmail will receive a daily backup, keep it for you for 30 days and then discard it automatically. If something happens to your site you have 30 days to go to your Trash folder and get the last one. Just remember not to empty the Trash by hand, or at least remember not to exclude the last backup, just in case your site crashes that very day.

And you? What kind of use do make of Filters and Labels in Gmail?