Once you have a lot of labels, group the related ones together. A parent label (like Vendors) holds child labels (one per vendor), so your sidebar stays tidy and everything has an obvious home.
Why group your labels?
When your sidebar fills up, grouping keeps it readable. A parent label gathers related child labels beneath it — Vendors over Acme Supply, Globex, and so on — and you can collapse the whole group when you don’t need it.
Nest a label under a parent
Make the parent first
Create the broad category label (for example,
Vendors). A child needs a parent to point at.Open Labels
Open Settings › Labels and click + Create label (or click an existing label to edit it).
Name the child
Type the child label’s name (for example,
Acme Supply).Set the Parent
Set the Parent dropdown to the parent label (
Vendors). That single choice is what nests it.Save
Click Save. The child now appears nested under its parent in the sidebar.
A parent can just be a container. File mail directly on a parent, or leave it empty and only use the children — whichever fits. The parent’s main job is to gather the group together.
Number a group to control its order. Labels normally sort alphabetically. Prefixing them with numbers — 001-, 002- — lets you force the order you want within a group.
Let rules file into a child label. Once the structure exists, a rule can drop incoming mail straight into the right child — see Organizing Incoming Mail with Rules.