How To Automatically Label E-mails in Gmail

Jamie Read more September 14, 2022

Despite having been around for over thirty years, emails still take up free time, annoy, frustrate and exasperate. The odd email does make us happy too, but for the most part, they are a chore rather than a pleasure. What about if you could automatically label emails in Gmail, sort them all, apply a label and delete spam? Wouldn’t that make life a little easier?

A self-monitoring inbox is the holy grail as far as I’m concerned. Spam can be removed, marketing and promotional emails can be labeled and sidelined, and the important emails can be labeled as such and placed in a folder where you’ll see them. All email platforms say they offer this kind of organization, but in my experience, only one delivers. Gmail.

The labels feature has literally changed how I use Gmail. I can now confidently use this email address for insurance quotes, signing up for new websites, and all those activities that would usually end up with an avalanche of spam. They still do send that avalanche, but now it doesn’t overwhelm my inbox.

Automatically label emails in Gmail

Labels help you sort through all of your emails and order them in a manageable way. Labels are Gmail-speak for folders and can automatically identify, classify and then organize all incoming emails using these labels.

By setting a label of Insurance, for example, I can have all the usual insurance quote spam and marketing from my insurer labeled and sent to that folder. I can then read or bulk delete them as I see fit. I can rinse and repeat this as many times as I like for any subject or sender that floods my inbox.

Let’s create a junk email label that will sort through all the spam emails that Gmail’s own filter doesn’t catch.

Select Create Label from the left menu. Select More if it isn’t visible.
Name your new label something meaningful and select Create.
Select your new label and select the down arrow in the search bar at the top of the page.
Add unsubscribe to the Include The Words line.
Select Create Filter.
Select Apply the label and select the label you created.
Check the box next to any other operators you want. Mark as read is a useful one.
Select Create Filter.

Now every time a spam or marketing email arrives, Gmail will scan it for the word ‘unsubscribe’ and will label and move it. As most legit spam contains this word somewhere, it is the most useful operator to use when dealing with spam.

Label work emails in Gmail

For other email filters, from friends or from work, for example, you can add a label of their name, the @worplace.com email address, or something else unique to the sender or type of email. The potential of these labels is huge.

For example, if you work out of the office, having all work emails sent to a Work folder so you can see them quickly can be useful.

Select Create Label from the left menu.
Name your new label Work and select Create.
Select your Work label and select the down arrow in the search bar at the top of the page.
Add the last part of the email address to the From line. For example, “@workplace.com”.
Select Create Filter.
Select Apply the label and select the Work label.
Select Create Filter.

From now on, all work emails from a given domain, “@workplace.com”, will be sent to the Work folder that was created in the left pane. As we didn’t add any operators, they won’t be marked as read, and you will see the number of emails beside the folder.

Excluding emails from labels

If you find that certain emails are being caught up in these labels that shouldn’t be, you can use exclusions to remove them. For example, if you want to keep certain newsletters that also use unsubscribe, and they get caught in the above filter, you can use the “-” operator to exclude them.

Just add –(*@emailaddress.com) in the From section of the filter, and they won’t be included. The * is a wildcard that will capture any address from that domain, and the “-” tells Gmail not to include the address in the label.

You can create as many labels in Gmail as you like and have them do all sorts of things, from sorting spam to filtering work, groups, hobbies, or whatever. If your inbox was bursting at the seams from too much trash and you were losing useful emails. As a result, this is a very simple way of taking back control.

If Gmail could somehow come up with an addon that could automatically unsubscribe me from the hundreds of trash emails I get on a weekly basis, it really would be the ultimate email!