Gmail labels trick for IMAP folders: Make all labels appear together.
Gmail recently added IMAP support for their excellent webmail service. Look here for details.
One of Gmail’s best feature is Labels. If you have the 3 labels, Bank, Receipts and Work, this is how they would appear in Gmail (ignore Junk E-mail — that’s something that Microsoft Outlook creates).
If you have configured your email client to access Gmail through IMAP, this is what you are going to see (using Microsoft Outlook 2007 as an example).
Confused? Unable to spot your labels that were so clearly visible in Gmail? Me too! More so if you have a lot more labels (I am sure most power users have more than the three labels that I use in this example 
).
There is a simple solution for this. In Gmail, edit label names and add a common prefix to all labels. In the example below, I have used the ‘~’ (tilde) character as prefix. With this change, all labels appear one after the other in the email client. No need to look through the list of folders anymore to identify labels!
But wait… There are even more ways to organize your labels and emails! In Gmail, edit label names and add a prefix followed by ‘/’ (forward slash). In this example, I have added the prefix ‘Labels/’ to each label (See image below for how it looks).
Now look at the folder structure in the email client. All labels appear under the ‘Labels’ sub-folder! Isn’t this even better?
You can take this further by creating different label structures (E.g.: Info/Bank, Shopping/Receipts, Shopping/Tracking etc.). You can even do multi-level label hierarchy (E.g.: Work/Project1/HiP, Work/Project1/LoP, Work/Project1/All etc.) — be creative here!
Note:
1. I have tested this only on Microsoft Outlook 2007.
2. I discovered the label hierarchy feature when I created a new label with a ‘/’ character in it and Outlook displayed part of it as a sub-folder.
3. If someone already knows about this, well, good for them!
4. If this is as per IMAP specification, great! Good for us…
Zorg, 
Sam Soffes 06:35 on April 8, 2008 Permalink |
I love the slash trick. It works great in Apple Mail and on my iPhone. Thanks
Canned 07:59 on June 24, 2008 Permalink |
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Canned
Daniel Andrews 23:58 on September 8, 2008 Permalink |
That’s a really neat trick! I’ll give that a shot.
Of course, then your labels in Gmail say “labels/whatever” next to the tagged items. That’s kind of obnoxious. I guess you just can’t win with Gmail’s IMAP implementation.
Dileepa Prabhakar 09:48 on September 9, 2008 Permalink |
Yes, but if you are using a desktop client, it’s really useful. Google can help by grouping all labels under the ‘Labels’ tag in their IMAP implementation.
Eugene 00:57 on August 11, 2009 Permalink |
I can see the labels as folders in my WM6 outlook. But the mails from the labels are not downloaded to the mobile. Please help.
Dileepa Prabhakar 10:58 on August 11, 2009 Permalink |
I think this is what you are looking for: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=539535
Menu –> Tools –> Manage Folders then tick the folders (your labels appear as folders) which additionally you would like to sync.
Rob 00:57 on August 16, 2009 Permalink |
Nice trick, but completely unnecessary! Just set the root folder to [gmail] in order to keep folders at the same level:
Tools -> Account Settings -> (your Gmail account) -> Change -> More Settings -> Advanced
set Root Folder Path to “[Gmail]” without the quotes
Dileepa Prabhakar 08:01 on August 16, 2009 Permalink |
The labels and Inbox are presented at a different level to [Gmail]. So that doesn’t work quite right. Even if that works for you, this still applies if you want to group labels together.
Pali Madra 06:16 on April 10, 2010 Permalink |
Hey neat trick
I had question about Gmail IMAP. If I have a filter which labels an email with a particular tag will that email still appear in my inbox or it will appear in that folder in my email client (in my case thunderbird)?
Thanks for your help.
Pali Madra
Zorg 11:36 on June 15, 2011 Permalink |
I like the part where you say:
(ignore Junk E-mail — that’s something that Microsoft Outlook creates)
I mean, I know you mean “ignore the label Junk E-Mail” but I chose to
interpret it …. well … a little differently.
Dileepa Prabhakar 19:12 on June 15, 2011 Permalink |
Heh. Well, there are some things that Outlook does better