Gmail -All Mail folder

mro

In Gmail, what is the All Mail folder ?


It seems to have duplicates of emails, or is it just another view of other folders, like Inbox, Sent together ?

Incoming emails go to Inbox, copy of outgoing emails go Sent, why have All Mail folder, what does it do, how does it work ?

I want to know how it works, so I know which emails I can keep & which I can safely delete including duplicate emails.

So I don't delete wrong emails.
.

pramsay13

Are you using a mobile app?
The only place I have an all mail folder is on my gmail app and all mail is the inbox for both of my gmail accounts.
If I delete from there they will be deleted from the individual inbox so don't delete unless you want rid of an email. That said you can still retrieve from the bin if you delete by accident.

mro

pramsay13 wrote: »

Are you using a mobile app?
The only place I have an all mail folder is on my gmail app and all mail is the inbox for both of my gmail accounts.
If I delete from there they will be deleted from the individual inbox so don't delete unless you want rid of an email. That said you can still retrieve from the bin if you delete by accident.

No, it shows online on laptop.

Tom99

Looks like All mail is everything as you suggest. Just click the 'less' button and it will disappear

mro

I deleted a load of emails from Sent folder, I then deleted these from Trash folder.

I then did Search of emails and there were still same group of emails in my All Mail folder.

Not sure what is going on.

mro

Tom99 wrote: »

Looks like All mail is everything as you suggest. Just click the 'less' button and it will disappear

Where is Less button ?

Tom99

mro wrote: »

Where is Less button ?

On the left:

Inbox
Starred
Sent mail
Drafts
More/Less

pramsay13

Are you using mail.google.com?

Cash-Strapped.T32

mro wrote: »

In Gmail, what is the All Mail folder ?


It seems to have duplicates of emails, or is it just another view of other folders, like Inbox, Sent together ?

Incoming emails go to Inbox, copy of outgoing emails go Sent, why have All Mail folder, what does it do, how does it work ?

.

Exactly - gmail doesn't actually use folders (don't ask me why, presumbly too old-school), it uses labels.
When you open a "folder", all you're doing is toggling-off all emails without the corresponding label, and toggling-on the emails that do have it.

Essentially the same thing as storing them in a folder.
In theory , it means you can add multiple labels to a particular email, and thus have it show in multiple "folders", without the confusion of actually saving duplicates in multiple folders (and think about how confusing that could get if you had more than one copy of an email and one version has more replies than the other, etc...)

So, "all mail", simply shows all email, regardless of what label it has - essentially the same thing as say for instance, outlook does, when you use the same option (although outlook does specifically use folders and that's why I chose it as an example ).

Make things any clearer?