Gmail-like Labels Coming to Thunderbird

Bug 261199 - UI for defining and editing virtual folders details how Thunderbird developers are working on implementing Gmail-like labels for 0.9. Basically you enter a few search terms and a folder to search on and the results appear in a folder.

Here's a screenshot.

» posted by pinder on October 18, 2004 at 09:51 AM

Comments

Pretty much copying the Filters feature in Opera's M2, that was available like a year ago.

# posted by M2

i didn't even know Opera had a mail client. that's how successful it must be going for them.

# posted by pinder

regardless, it's a big step forward for Thunderbird to add this capability. Sorting email has become a necessity for all of us, and we don't all use Opera.

# posted by Chad

I think they should focus on making TB more "sociable" with portable devices of any kind and a strong calendar system (SunBird will do the trick I guess)...

# posted by Emil Tamas

Eudora has had labels for the last half-decade. Of course, if it didn't happen on Gmail or Firefox, it never existed before.

# posted by Joe Clark

And outlook has categories. And secretaries uesed to color code folders in file cabinets too. So what. It's still a nice feature!

# posted by EldestNorski

Joe: Along with Eudora, Thunderbird and many email clients also have labels. While I am not familiar with Eudora, it does seem to me that you are limited to 7 labels with Eudora6.1 and I know that Thunderbird limits you to 5 labels you can assign.

These 'virtual folders' in Thunderbird will - as it seems - give you the flexibility to define as many labels/classifications/filters (whatever you want to call it) to group and organize messages better.

If this concept is covered by Eudora then that is fantastic! However, as far as I know it is not and to make matters worse, not all the features are available in Eudora unless you pay for it. I don't know about you but until I find an email client that can satisfy my requirements I wont consider spending my hard earned $$ when I can use a piece of open source software with more promise and valuable features.

# posted by Chad

A question regarding this.. I've seen the UI to create a new folder, but will be able to actually assign lablels to each piece of mail? I havent seen the UI to create labels anywhere, or to tag a particular peice of mail with a particular label..

# posted by FlashBang

Any idea how quickly these virtual folders (saved searches) will run?

Why would I not replace folders with saved searches, for instance?

# posted by J.B. Nicholson-Owens

I've used M2 for a while and I loved its features. Mainly its ablity to organise your mail for you automicatically by sender and type of attachment. Unfortunately, using it means you're also lumbered with the Opera browser. Not a bad one, mind you, lot's better than IE; but definitely not as good as Firefox.

# posted by mogster

Virtual folders are a great feature.

Unfortunately, they do not seem to work with the IDLE command, i.e. new messages are not automatically displayed in virtual folders unlike with normal folders.

Also, threading messages in virtual folders appears to be impossible.

To be fixed ?

# posted by kael

Chad - you can label any e-mail with one of 6 tags (important, To-Do, personal, work, etc), and it will show up in the list view in a particular color. You can sort by label (by adding the label column). You can rename any of the 6 tags to whatever you want, and change the color. For some reason, you can't add more than 6 labels.

# posted by Dotan Dimet

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