This tutorial will show you how to use labels in Gmail to organize your email conversations.
There are two ways to label conversations… you can use the Move to or the Labels options.
To use either, you must first select at least one conversation.
We’ll start with the Labels option… click the labels icon below the search window.
Here, you can choose one or more of your existing labels to apply to the selected conversation(s). The search box may be useful if you have many labels.
Let’s label the selected conversation as both Business and Personal.
When ready, click Apply.
The selected conversation has now been labelled as Business and Personal. You can see its labels next to its title.
There’s a shortcut method for applying a single label.
Deselect the previously selected conversation, and select the two above it.
Click the Labels icon.
This time, instead of clicking on the checkbox next to the label, click on its name.
Now, let’s see how Gmail treats a selection where not all selected conversations share the same labels.
Instead of showing a checkmark in the box next to each label, a line is displayed to show us that some but not all, conversations use this label.
Simply click the box as before to apply a label to all selected conversations, and the line becomes a checkmark.
Click Apply.
The Move to feature is similar to the Labels feature… the difference is that Move to will remove the label we are currently viewing (Inbox) from the conversation and replace it with the new one we choose.
Let’s select the only conversation that hasn’t been labelled yet and deselect others.
Click the Folder icon.
As you can see, this has the same basic layout as the Labels submenu, except the checkboxes have been removed. You can only move a conversation from one label to one other.
We’re also now able to Move conversations to Spam or Trash… these weren’t options under Labels.
Let’s move the selected conversation to Travel.
Another way to move a conversation is to drag it over to the label in the menu.
Click and drag the conversation over to Personal.
Let go of the mouse once the label is highlighted.
There is one last way to manage a conversation’s labels. Open a conversation, and at the top of the conversation, you can see a list of labels with an X next to each.
From here, you can remove labels from the conversation. Or, if you click on the label’s name, you’ll be taken to a list of all conversations that share that label.
This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to use labels in Gmail.