You see your email and feel like cleaning and organizing it. Now, Some emails you may want to delete and some you may not need for now but may need in the future. Here’s where Archiving in Gmail feature helps you.
Gmail works on the Label system, unlike its competitors which have folders to manage email. If we understand the Gmail labels, it’s a lot easy to migrate and organize Gmail. Labels are just like folders to store different emails. You get an idea where the email might be in Gmail by knowing the label of the email.
First, is the Inbox label. All the emails you receive and which you find in the Inbox tab have an Inbox label to them. You may not see it as it is hidden, but when you open an email in the inbox tab you can see the inbox label at the top.
Now that we know about labels, let’s check what label Archiving in Gmail has. Before that let us see what the Gmail archive is.
What is Archiving in Gmail?
Archiving lets you organize emails that you don’t want to see in the Inbox tab but don’t want to delete. Archive hides the email from the Inbox tab (label). This helps you to organize emails that are not important for now to be in the inbox and also not worth deleting, you may need it in the future.
Although you have to note that, if you receive replies to the archived emails, the mails will reappear in the inbox.
When you archive the email goes straight into the All Mails label.
Archive Vs Delete in Gmail
You may be confused on what’s the difference between archiving and deleting.
- When you archive an email in Gmail, the mail is hidden from the inbox label. Whereas when you delete a mail, it’s you know gets deleted from Gmail. Although you can restore it in 30 days from the Trash label. After that, it gets permanently deleted and can not be restored.
How to Archive in Gmail on a computer?
Archiving in Gmail is really easy and simple. Lets show you how to archive an email.
First, you have to log in to your Gmail account if you haven’t already. Now in the Inbox tab select the email you want to archive.
When you select an email you can see a toolbar appearing on the top.
Select the Archive option from there. Either you can click on archive from the top or on the same message on the right-hand side. (See the reference picture below.)
If you have keyboard shortcuts on, you can directly use the shortcut key e to archive an email you’re looking at. Select the email and click on the Move to inbox icon on the top.
To restore the archive email to the inbox, migrate to the All mail labeled folder on the right-hand side.
If you’d like an option to automatically archive messages after you’ve sent replies:
- Click the gear icon and choose Settings.
- Locate the Send and Archive setting and choose the option you prefer.
- Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
Once you enable the setting, you’ll see a new button at the bottom of the page when you reply to messages. When you’re done writing, click Send & Archive to instantly send the reply and archive the previous message.
How to Archive email from Android and IOS
Follow the below steps to Archive email from Gmail app.
You can choose to archive to be default from settings on Android.
- On your Android phone or tablet, open the Gmail app.
- In the top left, tap the Menu option.
- Tap Settings > General settings > Gmail default action.
- From Archive or Delete options, select Archive
- Scroll down to the “Action confirmations” section and choose if you want confirmation before archiving.
- Now you can simply swipe the email you want to archive and it will be hidden from Inbox.
Another way of Archiving in Gmail on Android and IOS app is to open the email message and tap on the Archive option on the top. On the IOS app, you can select senders profile on the email and select the Archive option.
To restore the Archive emails back to the inbox:
- Tap on the Menu option (three parallel lines).
- Scroll down and select the All Mail labeled folder.
- Open the email message you want to restore
- Tap on More(three dots next to the profile of the sender) and tap on the Move to Inbox option.
Apart from Archiving or deleting emails you can also choose Snooze or Mute options.
In case you want the email to be in your inbox but don’t want replies to bother you, choose the Mute option for that.
When you Snooze an email, it will be hidden from your inbox until the time you choose and reappear once the set time is over. This helps you when an email is not important for now but maybe needed after few weeks.
The main benefit of archiving emails is that this leaves your inbox less cluttered. You can think of archiving an email, like marking it as done.
