Gmail – I’ve Figured It Out, Marsha

Posted on 18 June, 2009

I’ve been using it for several years now, but some of the features of Gmail have always confused me. I’ve finally figured out the mystery of the extra labels created by my email clients (and what labels really are!), what all the labels are for, and why my config seems a bit different than what is shown. I’ve also figured out how to keep my clients from producing stray labels.

When I first used Gmail, I use just the web client. It was sufficient enough for me and worked just great. Over the years, I’ve switched to using mostly email clients like Thunderbird or my phone. When Google introduced POP access to Gmail, I jumped on instantly. POP isn’t the greatest method, but it allowed me to access my email from Outlook (at the time, I didn’t use Thunderbird yet, nor did I have a smart phone). The POP method finally got on my nerves (lost several emails and couldn’t access them online once I had them on my computer) and I switched back to using the web client.

I moved off to MSMS my Junior year (I’d grown to really love Gmail by then) and discovered that “gmail.com” was blocked. At least, partially. The school never blocked https access to any website (which allowed us to pretty much get around everything, eventually), and since Gmail had https access as an option, I jumped on that.

Summer comes and I discover Thunderbird. Fell in love and started using it with Gmail. Google also introduced IMAP at the time, so the frustration of POP was no more. The only thing was, Thunderbird created extra sent and trash labels. I didn’t notice it at all, however, so it wasn’t a problem.

That winter, I get a smart phone and connect to my Gmail through IMAP through that. Not a biggie, however, it did create another set of labels for sent messages and trash. I started noticing that some email that I sent never showed up in Thunderbird under IMAP. I visited the web client and discovered these extra labels and found those emails. A mystery indeed.

Never solving it, I continued on doing my normal thing of weeding out useless email and cleaning up my inbox. I had my school email forwarded to my Gmail as a paging system, so none of it was ever read except for the headers – if I saw something remotely interesting, I would go to a computer and log in.

Needless to say, this built up and after one and a half years of doing this, my Gmail usage grew to 144mb (only 14%, though). I didn’t know where all my space was being used (not like it was a big issue, though). I discovered 5k+ emails in my “All Mail” label.

Doing some research about IMAP, Gmail, and the whole label system, I finally figured out how labels are used, how they are interpreted in IMAP, why there were so many different labels for the same function (incorrect settings, which, for Trash in Thunderbird, this is a good read), and where my 144mb was.

I’m all happy now with the right labels, correct settings, and a better understanding of Gmail.

Oh, and my Trash is not called Trash – it is called Bin, and I don’t use [Gmail]/Trash, I have to use [Google Mail]/Bin – it has to do with my usage of the UK English in my email rather than US English. Minor thing.