Set up nested Labels and Message Sneak Peek in Gmail

Yet another new feature from Google Labs for Gmail users, Manu Cornet of Goolge posted in thier blog how to set up the new feature. Google uses labels concept against the folders as labels are more flexible than folders because a given email can have several labels but can’t be in several folders at the same time. Labels have the ability to organize mails hierarchically.

Its straight forward to setup, go to the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, look for “Nested Labels,” enable it and click “Save.” You’ll then need to name your label with slashes (/) to make it the child of another. For example, let’s say you wanted to create a simple hierarchy with a “Home” label, and inside it a “Family” and a “Vacation” label. Just create three labels with the following names:

Home
Home/Family
Home/Vacation

Create “Home/Family/Kids,” “Home/Pets,” etc., to get something like the screenshot on the left. If you had the parent label “Home” before you don’t have to create it from scratch.

Same way you can create complex hierarchies of labels if that’s the way you like to organize your mail, and you can expand/collapse labels to save space. You’ll always be able to tell whether a given label contains unread messages in its collapsed child labels by looking at whether it’s bold or not.

Message Sneak Peek

Another highly requested feature is the ability to preview messages to get a glimpse on what they contain and maybe take immediate action without opening them.

This is exactly what “Message Sneak Peek” does. Turn it on in the google labs , right-clicking on a line in your inbox shows a preview pane with the message in it.

You can also use keyboard shortcuts for a faster sneak-peeking flow (enable keyboard shortcuts in Settings first if you haven’t done so): hit ‘h’ to open a sneak peek card, then navigate with ‘j’ and ‘k,’ and dismiss the current card by pressing “Escape.” Messages you peak at will stay unread (or it wouldn’t really be a sneak peek.