How to remove the “Sent Mail” label from Gmail messages
May 3rd, 2012 § Leave a Comment
In Gmail, there is only a single copy of every message. All messages live in one place: “All Mail.” Messages can have different labels attached to them. Labels are different from folders, because a single message can have multiple labels attached to it. This allows a single copy of a message to VIRTUALLY show up in many different places. Labels are one of the most powerful features of Gmail. However, effective use of labels sometimes requires a new approach to email organization, and if you happen to be a new user coming to Gmail from another system that uses folders, it might be too much of a hassle to switch your workflow (or your way of thinking). The good news is that you can make Gmail work the way you want.
The “Inbox” is actually a label that is attached to all new messages that arrive in “All Mail.” When you “archive” a message, you are removing the “Inbox” label. The message disappears from the Inbox view, but it still exists in All Mail.
Labels can function like folders when you only have a single label attached to a message. So for example, if I move a message from the Inbox to the Jobs “folder,” what I am actually doing is removing the Inbox label and attaching the Jobs label.
Sent Mail is different. It is NOT a label. It’s actually a search function. When you click on Sent Mail, Gmail searches through the All Mail folder and displays a list of all messages that have your own email address in the From: field.
This works fine for most people, but sometimes you want more control over your Sent Mail, and this is where people run into problems. Unlike the Inbox label, it is not possible to remove the “Sent Mail” label from a message because as I mentioned previously, “Sent Mail” is not a label. It’s a search function that spits out a list of messages.
If you want total control over Sent Mail, the solution is simple: You will first hide the default Sent Mail, create your own “_My Sent Mail” label, and then create a custom filter to add this new label to all messages you send.
Here are the steps (all of these are done on your computer in the Gmail web interface):
- Open the Settings by clicking on the Gear (top right of the page)
- Click the “Labels” tab
- Under System Labels, find “Sent Mail.” Click “hide”. Uncheck “Show in IMAP”
- Scroll down and click the button called “Create new label”
- Call it “_My Sent Mail” (without the quotes) or something similar. Using an underscore forces this label to appear above any other labels that you might have already created. This will make it convenient to find the label in your long list of labels. Make sure that for this new label, “show” is selected and that “Show in IMAP” is selected.
- Click on the Filters tab.
- At the bottom, click “Create a new filter”
- In the From field, enter your Gmail address
- Click “Create filter with this search”
- Next, check the box next to “Apply the label” and choose “_My Sent Mail” as the label to apply
- OPTIONAL: You can also check the box “Also apply filter to xxx matching conversations” if you want these pre-existing conversations to also get the new label. You probably want to do this.
- Click “Create filter”
- Now send some test emails to make sure everything works. Try sending an email from the Gmail website and see if it shows up in _My Sent Mail on both the web interface. If you have an iPhone, check it there too. Also try sending an email from your iPhone and make sure it shows up in the correct place.
I tested this method with my iPad and my Gmail account and everything seems to work. You should be able to do this with multiple Gmail accounts too. Good luck!
YouTube Hack: Jump to a Specific Timecode
August 23rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Julie recently came back from the Asian American Journalists Association convention in Detroit. While there, she attended a Google workshop and came back with the following trick, which allows the viewer to jump directly to a specific place in the video.
Fundraising Video: Muslim Community Center of Louisville
April 30th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Although this project was actually completed several months ago, I never got around to posting it on this site. Better late than never, right?
To give you some background, the Muslim community in Louisville, Kentucky has grown rapidly over the past few years. The local community has taken up the challenge of building a new community center and school from the ground up. When finished, the complex will be the first of its kind in Louisville. In order to help raise funds for construction, community leaders decided to take a progressive approach and have a fundraising video produced on behalf of the project. I was fortunate to be given the contract to produce this video.
The first step was to meet with community leaders and identify their goals and vision for the center and the video. Next, I wrote a basic treatment to give them a feel for how the final video would turn out. The aim was a 5-7 minute video featuring interviews with community members and supplemented with B-roll of the construction that had already been completed.
The video was shot on a Panasonic DVX100b (in 30P mode since the video would be going onto youtube), an Arri light kit, softbox, Sennheiser mics, sound mixer, and a van full of grip equipment. I had a crew of four working under me. We shot for two days at several locations, including a house and the construction site itself. Completing the final edit took two weeks.
The biggest challenge was taking 7 hours of video and cutting it down to a concise 5-7 min piece. Also, the narrative had to be constructed from the material gathered during interviews. I used Avid Xpress Pro to edit. My approach was to first organize all of the video clips into bins based on content. I was detailed on my clip descriptions so that I could read what each person was saying without having to play the clip. After logging all clips, I printed out the contents of each bin. Having a paper hard copy made it easier to wrap my brain around all of the content. From here, I opened up a word processor and began writing a script based on the clips I had. In hindsight, my modus operandi was very similar to the way television journalists write stories for the news.
Once the script was complete, I started arranging clips onto the timeline. Next, I used B-roll to fill in the gaps in the appropriate places. This is not as easy as it sounds because you have to know when to show the speaker and when to show the B-roll. Sometimes, you can really emphasize the point being made by showing B-roll over the audio, and then cutting back to the speaker right before they make their point.
After I had ~70% of the clips in the timeline and was really starting to feel the story taking shape, I went searching for music. I found some great clips on musicloops.com by composer Mark Petrie. After laying these into the timeline, I was able to finish the edit and match the music. The last step was to add the short Islamic prayer (“In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful…”) to the very beginning, all in keeping with the client’s goals.
