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How to re-open xCode Archive?

Gmail Archive feature - it seems excellent and scary.

  • Will I regret aggressively using Gmail’s Archive function? I’ve been using Gmail for several years on the web and on Android phones, and I love it. I recently started using the Archive feature on my Apps account at work, and it seems really helpful, but honestly I’m scared to use Archive on my 2 main personal accounts. I have Google Apps-based Gmail for my work email, and I started using Archive to keep the Inbox for my work account empty. It seems like a nice way to keep things tidy: items for follow-up get labeled To Do and remain visible in my Priority Inbox, or they get banished to All Mail. But I consider this work email to be transient (sooner or later I’ll take another job) so it doesn’t worry me that I might mess it up. My personal Gmail has 5 years of emails and I hope to use it for as long as Gmail exists. Somehow that makes me afraid to Archive everything in my Inbox, because it’s not easy to undo Archiving for 9,000 messages. So now I have 9,000 emails in my Inbox, which is the opposite of organized. Is there any chance I’ll regret following the Archive workflow? Does anyone know of anything Archiving could mess up, or any horror stories around “I wish I hadn’t archived?” And is there any way to automatically label anything that goes from Inbox to Archived, so I could keep track of all emails that used to be in the Inbox but were archived just in case I wanted to undo the entire operation later on? Right now I could do a search of “everything in Inbox” and apply some kind of backup label, but then anything that I Archive in the future will be missing that label unless I manually add it (which I won’t).

  • Answer:

    If you're worried about not being able to find something important in the future, remember that GMail stands for Google Mail. The search function is insanely useful and powerful. But, if you're also looking for a technical solution to the problem as stated, you can always do this: Create a new label, "Archived", by selecting all email in your inbox, going to the tag icon that appears at top, and going to create new. Then archive that stuff! Next, click the gear, go to settings, and then filters. Create a new filter, and in the "To" field, input your current email address ([email protected], or whatever). On the next page, chose the option "add tag", and select your new "Archived" tag. This will tag everything that is sent to you with the "Archived" tag, which will stick even when you remove the "Inbox" tag (by archiving). It's a bit of a workaround, as all of your emails will have the tag both in the inbox and in the archive. But, AFAIK, there is no way to put a tag in place upon archiving.

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It's not really an archive. It's a folder.

roomthreeseventeen

I think the important thing is not that "archive" is a label, but that "inbox" is a label. When you archive an email, you are removing the inbox label so it doesn't show up in your inbox anymore.

Barry B. Palindromer

It's not even really a folder. It's a label.

ocherdraco

It's not really an archive or a folder, it's a label. Rather than the hierarchical directory system most of us are used to from OS X/Windows/etc, Gmail uses a label system to organize messages. The inbox isn't really a place -- it's a view that shows you all of the messages that are labeled "Inbox". "All Mail" is a view that shows all of your messages irrespective of label. The great thing about labels is that each message can have as many labels as you feel appropriate, so organization is a lot more fluid and relevant. In short, yes, archive away. I never have more than one page's worth of messages in my Inbox -- its only for open action items.

telegraph

Yeah, archiving is the only way I can stay sane with Gmail. Well, archiving with aggressive labeling and filtering. I think I have about 50 or so labels set up (some labels with sublabels) to help keep track of messages. And the good thing about Gmail is that even if you remove all the labels inadvertently, you can search for the message and usually find it easily. Note: if you decide to aggressively label and filter like I do--I often filter, label, and tell it not to show in Inbox--you'll want to activate the "show only if unread" feature so you don't have a list of a zillion labels making the left column unusable!

Fortran

I have never regretted archiving, I have never heard of anyone regretting archiving, and I cannot imagine a situation in which having archived items from my inbox would be a problem.

cranberry_nut

I've been archiving everything except active action item stuff and spam since I got my account years ago. It rules. I can easily find anything using the search function - the search operators work great and can filter out sent from received. I actually email myself membership numbers, confirmations, etc. so I can search for them later. Search works much better than labelling things for most of my purposes. If you have 9K messages in there, "Inbox" is not helping you organize.

momus_window

Anecdote: I've been using email since the "invite" days (I want to say like 7 years?) and have archived everything. I have deleted maybe 5 emails in this time. It's all still there. In terms of losing the sent/recieved status, this is obviously still maintained in the archive. Gmail's threading makes this pretty clear, but in case it isn't, the "from:" field should be a dead giveaway. Even after reading all your comments, I'm not entirely clear on what you're afraid of losing, but I can say nothing that *I* can possibly think of is lost when things are sent to the "Archive." Think of it this way: Gmail can mark emails as "important" and "not important" which puts them in different areas of your inbox. "Archive" is basically just the third tier of this system.

Patbon

I archive every single mail except a few that act as todos. This results in an inbox that has, at most, 3-8 different items. I have never had any problems with this approach because searching for stuff is fast and relatively powerful. I don't even bother with staring emails.

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