Until now, Gmail allowed users to set filters only for the future emails. Now when you create a filter or update one, Gmail allows you to apply it to old emails (see
Also apply filter to 160 conversations below in the screenshot). That's a very useful feature. How could you use it?
1. You change your mail account and you want to send all your emails from the Gmail account to your new one. Set a filter without any restriction and forward all the emails. That might also be useful to backup your emails.2. Forward more emails at once to a friend. Create a temporary label, set the label to the emails you want to forward, create a temporary filter that forwards the emails to your friend. And that's it. Don't forget to delete the filter after that.3. You want to archive all your emails.
4. Delete all the emails from your ex-girlfriend.
5. Set the label "jobs" to all the emails that contain job in the subject.
6. Merge two labels (A, B). Set the label B to all the emails that have label A. Just type "label:A" in the "Has the words" input box and choose "apply the label B".
7. Filter your sent emails. Include "label:sent" in the "Has the words" input box.
You can think of many other nifty applications for this new feature.
Like the
Delete All Spam link, this feature is not yet available to all the Gmail users.
More Gmail:
5 fast ways to check your Gmail accountCheck multiple Gmail accountsLabels: Gmail
Pete said on July 8, 2006 9:22 AM PDT:
So how do we get the features? I consider myself a major google supporter and would love to see this in action. I however still havent seen the delete all button, which makes me sad :(
Pieter said on July 8, 2006 9:29 AM PDT:
The option to forward messages only applies to new messages. You can't forward old messages right now. I just read it when I tried this function.
said on July 9, 2006 6:48 AM PDT:
I unfortunately don't have this yet? Strange
I don't have the filter feature yet, either. You must be special! :)
You are very nice, but there are many people that have these features. It's good to see Gmail alive.
Some Yahoo executive said once that Gmail will never get out of beta, as Google can't handle too many users without degrading performances.
Keith said on July 9, 2006 2:37 PM PDT:
I never know that
Gmail has such a feature. Interesting to know...
said on July 10, 2006 8:00 PM PDT:
I can't see anywhere these new features. How come? I would love to have them.
said on November 16, 2006 4:53 PM PDT:
It's now Nov. and still no sign of being able to forward large batches of old mail. This write-up is torture because YES there are many reasons this would be helpful.
Rawb said on March 13, 2007 1:02 AM PDT:
Why did they remove options 1 and 2 from the filter function??? Forwarding old email is the most useful function for a filter to me. ARG!!!! Forwarding 100's of emails manually one at a time is a major pain!!! Gmail needs to add this feature BACK!!! Grrrr....
Raj said on March 26, 2007 10:28 PM PDT:
hi, i have gave a condition like mails from account 'A@gmail.com' should move to "label:A", In this case the chat message also moving to the label, but i don don't that.
It's plain and simple:
The gmail filter will not forward old mail.
Sad to see this message in Gmail (in very tiny letters) AFTER I already set the filter to forward all the mail from a good friend and delete it after that. Gmail DID erase all these e-mails, but never forwarded them.
Thank you Google! (not!)
Bruno Setola
said on June 5, 2007 5:32 PM PDT:
The option of Filter is locatated on the top when you login gmail called 'Settings' and once you click on that, you will find out there is a tab call Filter.
Have fun.
Joe
said on July 5, 2007 8:18 PM PDT:
Mine only lets me forward new emails. I also have the small letters that say so when I set the filter up.
So, when I try to save my emails to my OUTLOOK, I get an automatic shutdown. This has happened twice. What a pain. Why oh why oh why oh why is gmail being stupid about this????????
Vadim said on September 9, 2008 11:56 AM PDT:
Hi,
I sitting near computer around 4 hours,
I want just to forward 100 conversations to another email account.
and I found msg from google
Note: old mail will not be forwarded
How to forward my all messages?
Sarathy said on September 10, 2008 10:31 AM PDT:
I want to send many mails under 1 label at one go using Gmail. How this can be done?
Great .. Nice tip ..
visit http://smashtech.blogspot.com/2008/09/manage-gmail-account-effectively-with.html
said on June 23, 2009 2:54 AM PDT:
Googles ultimate purpose is to control all the information in the world. Thats why moving mail from other places into gmail is supported but moving mail away from google is not made easy. Simple as that.
