Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Gmail Labels

I've been using Gmail for a little while now, using it to receive several email lists. One of its features is the lack of folders. Everything is dumped into your inbox. However, you can "Label" messages. After creating a Label, it will appear in a list in the left-hand pane of your Gmail windows. You can then click on a Label name and display only those messages that are labeled appropriately.

The effect is essentially the same as having folders, with one key difference. You can apply more than one Label to a message. While you can always copy messages to more than one folder in a conventional email client, this results in duplication. Gmail's approach lets you sort messages like you can with folders, but allows the same message (not copies of it) to reside in more than one "folder," in effect.

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