Andy Walker / Android Authority
My Gmail email philosophy is simple: keep all emails in the All Mail folder for the rest of time. However, Gmail includes several organizational tools that allow you to fully control your mailbox, from custom rules to labels, filters, and its new AI smarts. One management action that has stood the test of time is Archive.
This little tool is just a horizontal swipe on an email away, immediately removing it from the Inbox and stuffing it out of view. This, in a sense, is a helpful option. It pushes users towards that revered inbox zero, but it’s terribly ineffective if you look at it critically.
Even though archiving is as old as Gmail, it has been broken for over a decade. Let me explain.
Do you use the archiving feature in Gmail? 58 votes Yes, I use it daily, and I have no problem with how it functions. 26 % Yes, but I wish Gmail made it easier to find archived emails. 24 % No, I've only ever accidentally archived emails. 33 % No, I tried it, and I don't like how it functions. 7 % No, I use a different method to organize my emails in Gmail. 10 %
An archivist’s nightmare
Andy Walker / Android Authority
First, to understand the problem, I must explain how Gmail handles your array of emails.
Every email stored in Gmail is located within the All Mail location. Everything else, including your Inbox, is not a folder or physical location but a label. This virtual filing cabinet method is a great way to organize mail. It’s much like a physical ring binder that hosts every leaf of paper, but differentiated by sleeves and colorful dividers.
With everything present in a single place, you can effectively categorize, tag, and filter mail using custom rules and search filters. In theory, this lets you find every email you’ve ever received, but this methodology has problems, especially regarding Gmail’s superficial archival method.
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