Please help - question on Gmail

I can’t figure out how to make every e-mail from the same person automatically be applied with the same label. So if I get an e-mail from

Bob Smith

I want it always to be labeled “Bob Smith”. Do I have to apply each label each time? Why doesn’t it stay? Does everyone else apply each label each time?

What you’re looking to do is create a filter. In the “create filter” dialogue, you’d enter “From: bob.smith@someplace.com”, hit next, and then tell it to apply the label “Bob Smith”.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me, either.