The One Thing Gmail Really Needs — And Has Never Been Done
by Tony Hung on July 18, 2007
And that I would almost pay money for.
I mean there are a bajillion add-ons for Gmail — and some of them are even useful — but for the love of all that’s holy, why hasn’t anyone figured out a greasemonkey script to allow Gmail to sort your inbox/folders by its column? It, by its unchangeable default, doesn’t allow you arrange your inbox by anything EXCEPT by date. You cannot, for example, sort by author, or by subject.
I love gmail as much as the next geek, but when my email is piled way high, I find that this single thing prevents me from sorting things out in an efficent way.
Last week, bordering on the brink of email bankruptcy, I would have done terrible things all for being able to sort by author. Doesn’t anyone else notice how much easier it is to sort through email once you’re able to group and SEE your email by common groups? Like who wrote it?
- “Ah yes, all my email newsletters — they are all crap, good-bye” [delete!]
- “Hmmm, notifications from the university — better save them all” [archive!]
- “Email forwards from my favourite aunt — again?” [spam!]
Yes, I know we can “ask” for it to be done with its next ‘upgrade’ or whatever, but why it hasn’t been implemented by now by Google proper, OR, some greasemonkey ninja is simply beyond me.
If anyone does know how this can be done, please let me know so I can do this and help publicize this important piece of information for the world to enjoy.
24 comments
How about trying filters?
by Hsien Lei on July 18, 2007 at 6:54 pm. #
Not as convenient! Why go through two or more extra steps each time? :)
by Tony Hung on July 18, 2007 at 7:34 pm. #
well given gmail’s motto of “search, don’t sort” i doubt they’ll ever offer a sort option. besides, a sort by author would be useless when trying to sort a conversation that has multiple authors.
by chris on July 18, 2007 at 7:55 pm. #
Chris — maybe, but then I’d want to “search” that. For everything else, it makes a lot of sense, I think.
by Tony Hung on July 18, 2007 at 9:22 pm. #
What GMAIL REALLY needs is IMAP….
by ian on July 18, 2007 at 9:25 pm. #
Tony, I agree. Search pulls too many results and puts them in some weird order. Sometimes I just want to sort by author and find the email that way.
by Elaine Vigneault on July 18, 2007 at 9:56 pm. #
@Tony: I would agree with Hsien Lei’s comment on using the filters. Wouldn’t it be helpful to set the filters up and that way it would only be a ‘one time’ chore. Pardon me but I didn’t get the concept of ’2 steps each time’ as in your reply.
But on the whole i do agree that it lacks the various sorting options like in Outlook for example where you can sort by practically anything. Temporarily at least i believe advanced search would be a brilliant substitute…dont you think?
by Bentley on July 18, 2007 at 11:07 pm. #
Bentley: here are your two steps. 1) open up filter 2) set filter.
And you want me to do that for every potential author I have in my inbox? Surely you jest, sir! :)
And that’s *besides* the inefficiency of using *each* filter *each* time to find your documents.
I mean, how much easier would it be to actually have a link over the author column (where there isn’t any right now), and you just click on it? Presto-magicko — all done.
Or would that be too simple?
by Tony Hung on July 18, 2007 at 11:17 pm. #
You could always use the “from:” prefix to search for authors more closely. For example, if I have a number of notifications from Facebook that I have already dealt with and want to delete and a couple of other emails about Facebook that I want to keep, search for “from:Facebook” and it will only return the messages sent by Facebook, then it’s select all and delete!
That’s a good way of searching for authors, here are the other operators available: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=7190&topic=1579
Hope this helps!
by Phil on July 19, 2007 at 3:19 am. #
For me, it would be nice that when I click the “ALL” to select all emails – I actually get all that I want to select. Currently, I only get the first 50 or all the posts.
For instance, I’m using gmail to email backups of about 35 blogs MySQL databases to – every day. I’ve reached the gmail 2.5G limit twice now. What I want to do – is delete a range of backups, usually the oldest in my gmail account, but leave the month-end ones. It would be nice to just select a range from e.g. February 1-27, 2007 and click delete. Instead, I can click “all” and only the 50 displayed gets listed. There is an option to delete the entire list of 3000+ incoming emails, but I do not want to do that at this time. Instead, I’m deleting the oldest 50 at a time, except month-ends – to get me back space once again.
It’s one of those “$Dialing for Dollar$” things that irritate me (if you are an SCTV fan, you would know what that means – it BUGS me!)
by HART (1-800-HART) on July 19, 2007 at 4:26 am. #
I have to second or third the filters suggestion. That is *exactly* how I do those same operations.
Create the filter and when it asks you if you want to apply it to the existing conversations say yes.
Gets the job done, and more importantly gets it done forever.
by engtech @ IDT on July 19, 2007 at 12:16 pm. #
@engtech:
I just don’t see how setting up filters is easier than a one-click ‘sort’ on authors, or dates, or even subject lines for your inbox. Am I missing something?
by Tony Hung on July 19, 2007 at 12:36 pm. #
I don’t think it’s faster for a one time thing, but it’s definitely faster for long term.
For stuff I want to read later I would put a label on them, skip the inbox, and leave as unread.
I have put “delete filters” on relatives who don’t understand not to spam.
It’s still quick to do because there aren’t many options for filters.
by engtech @ IDT on July 19, 2007 at 12:51 pm. #
see what i have always found it to be lacking in gmail is its inability to sort based on status (i.e., unread, read). it would make life so much easier, esp. after a long (i.e. >24 hours) period of time away from the Internet. if there’s any gmail engineers out there, maybe consider doing that with your do-anything-you-want time? :)
by wendy on August 9, 2007 at 4:30 pm. #
@wendy:
when in gmail do a search for:
label:inbox label:unread
pretty much any missing functionality is available as a search operator.
by engtech IDT on August 9, 2007 at 4:38 pm. #
…when using a filter, instead of:
label:inbox label:unread
…just type:
is:unread
by @zkool on August 13, 2007 at 6:13 pm. #
[...] isn’t the first time I’ve talked about it, and its still mind-boggling how this feature is still noticeably absent. I know that some folks [...]
by Deep Jive Interests » Gmail 2.0 Is Nice — Still No Sorting Function, Though. on November 5, 2007 at 6:43 pm. #
Would someone please tell me why you cannot sort by column? Had I know this, I never would have signed up for GMail. I receive several subscriptions from the same sender, but with different subject lines. Therer is no way for me to label or use folders without spending a day sitting here doing only that. What’s the problem?
by Elle Bee on February 13, 2009 at 12:38 pm. #
It is crazy that you can’t sort by column. I am trying to switch to Gmail and I can’t believe it is not in there.
Jeff
by Jeff on March 2, 2009 at 11:00 am. #
rediculous that google doesn’t do this, with all their products, this HAS to be a choice, …it is a killer…so much junk to rid, but filters and all is just too time consuming…maybe use mac mail, and with imap, will it retro delete on the gmail side?
by Tony Marciante on August 24, 2009 at 2:40 am. #
June, 2010~
STILL no sort options!!! WTF?
I’ve somehow managed to convolute my Gmail THROUGH Yahoo mail and download it to Incredimail…where I can sort it, Finally!
I still have to go directly to Gmail to rescue my intended mail from the still unsortable spam folder. THAT’s where the option is most painfully absent. I have to read each of hundreds of senders and subjects. No other email app, in my 20+ years of computing, requires me to slog through the mire of v*i*ag*r*a variations to make sure my favorite uncle’s epistles don’t get deleted because of a new address.
I do not understand this @ all.
by Cathy Gould on June 24, 2010 at 12:39 am. #
Haven’t tried this but will. Anyone else care to give it a go? Hope it helps.
http://www.gtricks.com/gmail-tricks/sort-gmail-subject-label-sender/
by kosty on July 11, 2010 at 5:02 am. #
Haven’t yet tried this but anyone else care to give it a go? Looks suspiciously like [yet...] another “filter thingy” but maybe not:
http://www.gtricks.com/gmail-tricks/sort-gmail-subject-label-sender/
by kosty on July 11, 2010 at 5:03 am. #
It is because there is some erudite geek on a large throne who looks down upon the world and says “thou shalt learn to not sort by columns, as I have determined this to be stoopid and too much like outlook”. Then he gets on his Segway and rides off to his gourmet free lunch.
by e on October 18, 2011 at 10:32 am. #