Last month, Google deployed a new feature in Gmail which automatically categorizes your emails as social, promotions, updates, and forums. I find it annoying extra clutter. It provides no value to me. It's catagorizations are usually wrong. It smacks of Big Brother. And there is no button to turn it off.
After a month of ignoring it, I started searching. I found an easy solution. It's a one-time task. Create a filter which captures all your email, and set the category to 'personal'. Be sure to check the box to apply the filter to all existing emails too. Then wait. Mine took about 15 seconds to update all my archived emails.
The complete instructions were posted by wdurham on June 2 at the bottom of this page:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/MDWXUKCHrPw%5B1-25-false%5D
All my current emails are now un-categorized, future emails will not be categorized, and the extra clutter is gone. Thanks wdurham.
Perfect! And you're right, things never get filed correctly.
ReplyDelete