# Create a Folder in GMAIL? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 5, 2008, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871 "2008-12-05T16:08:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![stolichnaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bcef8e/32.png) [@stolichnaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stolichnaya)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/21 "2008-12-06T03:01:22Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > :smack: > > I don’t want labels! (this reminds me of the Monty Python Spam sketch) > > One folder I have at work is Orders. So if I was using Gmail for work I’d want to see the following mailboxes: > > Inbox > **Orders** > Starred (actually I don’t really want this one, seems like that’s more of a filter than a box) > Chats > Sent Mail > Drafts > All Mail > Spam > Trash > > When an order e-mail comes in, it should get filtered to the Orders folder and not to the Inbox. I realize that the following will not quite give you the exact experience of folders, but you can set a filter to a) apply a label of “Orders” and b) skip the inbox (there is a checkbox for this). Then when you look at your list of labels, it will show labels with new mail as bold, with the number of new items in parentheses. The email will not show in your inbox. This is pretty close to what you want. You can even edit important labels with an underscore or a number at the beginning, so that they show up at the top of your list of labels. It’s really quite flexible. I’m a folder junkie myself, but the combo of labels and truly excellent search means I don’t miss them much. I have used gmail for both personal and work email, now I use outlook for work and I very much miss the gmail interface. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/22 "2008-12-06T08:34:32Z")
> [@Rysto](#): > > I’m honestly not trying to be a jerk here, I’m trying to break down your preconceptions and demonstrate that labels, properly implemented, are just folders by another name with the extra bit of functionality that you can have multiple labels on a single piece of mail. It seems to me that there are people who like to on one hand claim that labels are The One True Way to organize your mail and once you achieve enlightenment, you’ll love them, but then in the same breath, dismiss complaints with “but it’s the same thing as folders!” It can’t be the same thing and a giant breakthrough all at once. If they’re so equivalent, why does the UI have to be substantially different to the point that newcomers miss the parallel? If they’re the same thing as folders and people expect folders, shouldn’t the UI just … present them as folders? I mean, you’re forced to do that at some point: the IMAP interface uses a folder metaphor, and mapping between the two ends up kind of wonky. (food for thought: if the two concepts were really so equivalent, mapping betwen them should be pretty trivial). Don’t get me wrong. I love labels. They just aren’t the same thing as folders. And I don’t really understand why labels aren’t just metadata in addition to the folder hierarchy. Best of both worlds: you want folders, you use folders. You just want labels, everything is in one folder, all labeled up to your heart’s content. Didn’t WinFS have some grand vision of removing the concept of folders from the filesystem, replacing them instead with queries that find files with certain attributes (e.g. labels)? What ever happened to that? ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/23 "2008-12-06T18:07:37Z")
> [@stolichnaya](#): > > I realize that the following will not quite give you the exact experience of folders, but you can set a filter to a) apply a label of “Orders” and b) skip the inbox (there is a checkbox for this). > > Then when you look at your list of labels, it will show labels with new mail as bold, with the number of new items in parentheses. The email will not show in your inbox. This is pretty close to what you want. You can even edit important labels with an underscore or a number at the beginning, so that they show up at the top of your list of labels. > > It’s really quite flexible. I’m a folder junkie myself, but the combo of labels and truly excellent search means I don’t miss them much. I have used gmail for both personal and work email, now I use outlook for work and I very much miss the gmail interface. Thanks, having a label remove the message from the Inbox would be better, I was not aware of that. But it’s still not folders. Gmail gives you a default set of folders (Inbox, Sent, etc.) Why not allow custom ones? The search is very good, labels are ok, but to really get organized folders are very useful. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/24 "2008-12-06T18:22:39Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > Thanks, having a label remove the message from the Inbox would be better, I was not aware of that. But it’s still not folders. Gmail gives you a default set of folders (Inbox, Sent, etc.) Why not allow custom ones? The search is very good, labels are ok, but to really get organized folders are very useful. Heh. Those aren’t folders, but labels. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/25 "2008-12-06T18:34:30Z")
You know folders in all computer systems I am familiar with are hierarchical labels. The main thing about folders is that for the most part an item can have only one label. Allowing mail to have more than one label is really useful. But not allowing labels to be hierarchical is a big draw back to the way google does things. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/26 "2008-12-06T18:42:18Z")
There’s a browser script/addon called [Folders4Gmail](http://arend-von-reinersdorff.com/folders4gmail/) that’ll let you use hierarchical labels, if that helps. You can then name one label “Work” and put things like “Work/Resume”, “Work/Project P” under it, and maybe also a “Family” label containing “Family/Catherine”, “Family/Notes/Rev216”, etc. It should work with all major browsers as long as you follow the instructions and install the prerequisites (e.g. Greasemonkey for Firefox or IE7Pro for Internet Explorer). ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/27 "2008-12-06T18:42:43Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > But it’s still not folders. Gmail gives you a default set of folders (Inbox, Sent, etc.) Why not allow custom ones? The search is very good, labels are ok, but to really get organized folders are very useful. “Inbox”, “Sent”, etc. are indeed just labels, but you can make up your own labels quite easily. If you’re saying that you can’t include your own views/labels/folders among the standard Gmail labels, then that is true. User-specified labels are relegated to an area below the standard ones. But it is a criticism of this particular implementation of labels, not labels in general. Google’s approach to labels is not necessarily ideal. Another criticism, already mentioned, is that Gmail labels cannot be arranged hierarchically. ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/28 "2008-12-06T19:17:30Z")
they are the same as folders except you can put an email in more then one folder. whats so hard to understand and use? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/29 "2008-12-06T20:32:25Z")
Note that with file linking, you can have more than one “name” for a file or folder. So the “multiple labels not applying to a folder based system” is bunk. I’ve used file folders on computers for 30 years. They’ve been around for a long time for a simple reason: they work well. Gmail’s glurge about labels being better ignores the customers. Never a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/30 "2008-12-06T20:48:00Z")
This seems to be straying into Great Debates or The Pit territory. I’m just a computer programmer and UI designer, and have been using e-mail since 1994, so what do I know? ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2008, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/31 "2008-12-07T03:05:31Z")
> [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > they are the same as folders except you can put an email in more then one folder. whats so hard to understand and use? And you **can’t** put them inside other labels for organizational purposes. ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2008, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/32 "2008-12-07T03:49:20Z")
> [@ntucker](#): > > And you **can’t** put them inside other labels for organizational purposes. You can’t make it “look pretty”, no. But functionally, why not? Let’s say you have a traditional folder system with one set of folders called “Orders” and one set called “Events”. Within each, you have a set of monthly folders, January through December. You file orders under “Orders” -\> [whatever month the order is to be filled] and events under “Events” -\> [whatever month the event occurs]. Typical folder structure, right? And the argument against labels might be that it’s too unwieldy to have “January Orders”, “February Orders” . . . “December Orders”, AND “January Events”, “February Events” … “December Events” as individual labels. That’s 24 of them, which would be a fairly long list. But why not have “Orders” and “Events”, and then your subset of months, separately? You label an event occurring in February with “Events” and “February”, and an Order to be filled in June with “Orders” and “June”. In your traditional folder system, you’d click “Orders”, then “June” to find that email and all the others with orders occurring in June. In Gmail, you can type “label:Orders AND label:June” to accomplish the same thing. As an added benefit, you can easily and on one screen see everything labeled a particular month, which you can’t do with the folder system. Can you give an example of a hierarchical folder system that wouldn’t work in this manner? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2008, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/33 "2008-12-07T13:34:55Z")
**Garfield226** : Maybe you haven’t heard about file links that I mentioned earlier. Start reading [here.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link) They’ve been around for over 25 years and very handy for having multiple ways to access files and directories. With a mail program and its own filing system, they’re quite easy to implement. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2008, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/34 "2008-12-07T21:23:13Z")
> [@Garfield226](#): > > You can’t make it “look pretty”, no. But functionally, why not? Well, that’s the crux. You can’t make it “look pretty”, meaning you lose the convenience that a hierarchical folder UI provides. You can’t easily browse what labels you’ve mentally put “under” others, you have a huge list of labels (if “events” and '“orders” are the only contexts under which I file things by month, why do I need “april” listed as one of the first things in my labels sidebar?), you can’t file rarely-used stuff away where you rarely see it, etc. The label sidebar in gmail is pretty useless to me, because I have enough “folders” that my commonly-used ones scroll off the bottom, but I see ones that hardly get used at all. Hierarchical labels would solve this problem, because I’d arrange them according to what I use a lot. You are correct that you can implement a hierarchy-like system if you’re willing to put up with an unwieldy user interface. I just don’t agree that that makes it “just as good” or “the same thing.” ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/35 "2008-12-08T01:06:26Z")
You guys talking about hierarchical labels should really try that addon I mentioned earlier. It seems to do exactly what you’re looking for. ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/36 "2008-12-08T07:02:41Z")
> [@404 Clue Not Found](#): > > You guys talking about hierarchical labels should really try that addon I mentioned earlier. It seems to do exactly what you’re looking for. Yep, they should, I did and thanks for the info… ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/37 "2008-12-08T19:01:00Z")
I may, but I have an inherent distrust of those types of things, knowing that they were necessarily developed by hacking on internal details of gmail that might change at any time. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/38 "2008-12-08T19:04:32Z")
Nice hack, but my (perhaps petty) objection is that it stays in the Labels section rather than the InBox, Sent, etc. section. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/39 "2008-12-08T19:24:08Z")
Okay, let’s say I’m a member of an online group called “The Blind Chef”. Everything that’s posted to that group gets emailed to me, and the title of the email begins with [The Blind Chef]. So I create a label [The Blind Chef]. Now what do I do? ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871/40 "2008-12-08T21:08:19Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Okay, let’s say I’m a member of an online group called “The Blind Chef”. Everything that’s posted to that group gets emailed to me, and the title of the email begins with [The Blind Chef]. So I create a label [The Blind Chef]. > > Now what do I do? Are you trying to have mail from that group automatically get that label? If so, use Gmail’s “Create a filter” function. It’s to the right of the “Search Mail” and “Search Web” buttons, near the top of your screen. In step one, put in “[The Blind Chief]” in the Subject field. In step two, have it apply the proper label. That’s it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-a-folder-in-gmail/475871.md?page=1)