I’ve been using Gmail filters to route mail from various mailing lists into different folders [Google Mail calls them “labels”, just so you know –DT] but as I proceed, I find that I don’t always like the initial name I use. How can I change a folder [label!] name?
Over the last few years, I have found that the vast majority of my email is now routing to my Gmail account. With its splendid spam filters, handy smartphone app and cloud-based portability, it’s an easy and modern way to deal with the waves of messages that arrive every day. But as you have identified, those mail filters are critical for my sanity and I now have over 50 filters routing mail into all sorts of mail folders (though, as I said, Google insists that they’re just labels. If that’s what they want to call them, well, then okay. But they’re really folders, right? 🙂
Whatever you call them, mnemonic names to help organize your incoming messages or collections of messages are clearly a win. And people’s names change, organizations change, companies rebrand, and sometimes you just have a whim and “Picnic Planning” happens and becomes “Picnic History”. That’s why it’s pretty darn important to know how to change those labels on a whim. Better: when you change a label’s name, the filters associated with it don’t have to be updated. That just happens magically, and thank goodness!
Gmail’s interface isn’t great, but in this case it’s pretty straightforward to make this change.
Start by clicking on the settings gear icon on the top right:
You can play with your screen display density (I prefer Compact, as you can see, but try the different settings, see which you prefer) but for this task, you’ll want to choose “Settings”.
Now the complexity level shoots through the roof. Don’t panic, though, just look along the top menu for “Labels”:
Click on “Labels” to see a list of every label associated with Gmail, including a lot of system labels.
Scroll down a bit and you’ll see your own labels. Here are three of mine:
If you look closely, you’ll see that “AskDaveTaylor WP” is against a white box and has an editor cursor shown. Turns out if you simply click on a label name that you can edit it in situ, no extra work needed:
Done with the changes? Click anywhere else on the screen and you’re good to go. Done.
Also note that I always have all my labels selected to “show if unread” but otherwise hide. Makes my Gmail main view pleasantly austere and uncluttered.
That’s it. You can fine tune your Gmail folder, um, label names any time you want!
Hello Dave,
I renamed a folder in Gmail that had truncated the name because it was too long. That same Gmail was configured to sync with Microsoft Outlook via IMAP. Upon renaming the folder all of the email in the Root of that label was deleted. The one subfolder retained 2 emails that were just received but those 2 disappeared.
Did I just lose 1,000’s of emails or what shall I do
Thanks
Curtis
Thank you so much – worked perfectly
I have a label name that is indented. I cannot line this up with the rest of my labels & it creates a label that is hidden when I look for it.
How can I fix this & rename?
When I scroll down on my labels it does not light up white it is blue and it does not have an edit cursor on it so I can’t change it