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July 8, 2006

New In Gmail: Apply Filters To Old Emails


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 account
Check multiple Gmail accounts
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23 comments:

  1. PeteJuly 8, 2006 at 9:22 AM

    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 :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. iktjilpJuly 8, 2006 at 9:29 AM

    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.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 9, 2006 at 6:48 AM

    I unfortunately don't have this yet? Strange

    ReplyDelete
  4. sarahintampaJuly 9, 2006 at 11:04 AM

    I don't have the filter feature yet, either. You must be special! :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Alex ChituJuly 9, 2006 at 11:48 AM

    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.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousJuly 9, 2006 at 2:37 PM

    I never know that Gmail has such a feature. Interesting to know...

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousJuly 10, 2006 at 8:00 PM

    I can't see anywhere these new features. How come? I would love to have them.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousNovember 16, 2006 at 4:53 PM

    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.

    ReplyDelete
  9. UnknownMarch 13, 2007 at 1:02 AM

    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....

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownMarch 26, 2007 at 10:28 PM

    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.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Bruno SetolaMay 11, 2007 at 2:23 PM

    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

    ReplyDelete
  12. AnonymousJune 5, 2007 at 5:32 PM

    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

    ReplyDelete
  13. AnonymousJuly 5, 2007 at 8:18 PM

    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????????

    ReplyDelete
  14. sakaSeptember 9, 2008 at 11:56 AM

    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?

    ReplyDelete
  15. ESNSeptember 10, 2008 at 10:31 AM

    I want to send many mails under 1 label at one go using Gmail. How this can be done?

    ReplyDelete
  16. AnonymousOctober 27, 2008 at 11:17 AM

    Great .. Nice tip ..

    visit http://smashtech.blogspot.com/2008/09/manage-gmail-account-effectively-with.html

    ReplyDelete
  17. AnonymousJune 23, 2009 at 2:54 AM

    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.

    ReplyDelete
  18. AnonymousSeptember 22, 2009 at 12:41 PM

    Unfortunately this is not working anymore. Filters are only applid to inbox.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Parag P. DokeJanuary 20, 2010 at 8:00 AM

    I too have observed that it does not forward old email.
    Does anyone have a trick for forward existing email to an email id using filters?

    ReplyDelete
  20. AnonymousDecember 9, 2010 at 6:39 AM

    When you create the search criteria for the filter, you can do a "Test Search", which will find all email that satisfies the criteria. Then, select 'Also apply filter to the x conversations below' when you Create Filter. The filter will retroactively do the action to them.

    ReplyDelete
  21. AnonymousJanuary 31, 2011 at 1:49 AM

    @Anonymous @December 9 - please read carefully: EXCEPT FORWARDING OLD MAILS!

    There is a tiny note: «old mail will not be forwarded»

    ReplyDelete
  22. UnknownAugust 9, 2011 at 8:21 PM

    So how can we forward old mail? I have been using one e-mail account for work and personal e-mails, and I'd like to separate the two by forwarding all my old work e-mails to my new separate work account. How can I do this?

    ReplyDelete
  23. Thom StrattonJanuary 17, 2012 at 9:10 PM

    Download them in Thunderbird http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

    Also add the new mail account.

    Copy the messages you want to the new mail account within Thunderbird.

    ReplyDelete

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