Gmail is a fantastic way to do email.  I switched totally to it some months ago and it is a critical tool for me as an Internet marketer.

I love being able to check my email from anywhere and the spam control is excellent.

But Gmail isn’t perfect.

Previously while using Thunderbird and Outlook Express, I used to like keeping my emails in nested folders.   So if I had a partner named Bob Smith, I would create a folder for Partners and then within my Partner Folder to have another folder for Bob Smith.  This made it very easy to find all the emails I exchanged with Bob.

Gmail works with labels instead.  I like the label system, but I now have over 185 labels.  So it is hard to find Bob’s emails when I need them because Gmail doesn’t let you nest your labels by putting them into categories.

Then I came across a product called Better Gmail.

Better Gmail is a free add on for FireFox that provides a bunch of very useful add on tools for Gmail including nested labels, unread message icon on your browser tab, file attachment icons, and more.

I installed the add ons and now I can easily created nested labels by using this format for naming or renaming Category/Label.  So, for the example above, I would rename my Bob Smith label to Partners/Bob Smith and the add on will show the label as Partners with a plus sign next to it.  When I click on the plus sign, the Partner category label opens up and shows me all the partner labels underneath.

One tip – make sure you change your settings in Gmail to show ALL your labels.  Better Gmail needs all the labels showing to properly move them into their categories.

Better Gmail makes it much easier to organize my hundreds of labels and really increases the usability of Gmail for me.  I highly recommend it.

I am not affiliated with Better Gmail – it just works great for me!  And t has over 3.3 million downloads so many others agree.

Garland Coulson, “The E-Business Tutor”