This article explains how Google labels are converted to folders during a migration.
What is a label?
Labels are tags that you can apply in gmail to emails to categorize messages the way you want them to be grouped.
Other messaging systems use folders to store and categorize mails.
Label migration
During migration from Google to another mail system, labels are converted to folders.
Mails are stored to the folders corresponding to the labels.
In Google, a mail can have several labels.
Cloudiway does not duplicate mails. If a mail has several labels, the first one is kept.
Cloudiway Migration also creates a special folder named zNoLabel.
Mails without labels are migrated to zNoLabel: this is the case, for example, for Google mails that have been archived (the labels are removed from the mail and do not appear anymore in any label).
Programmatically, Labels and Sublabels are retrieved in a form of string, separated by a “/”. Example: If there is a sublabel called “Football” under a Label called “Sports”, these labels are retrieved as “Sports/Football”. If you have a label that contains a “/” sign, it will be interpreted as a Label and Sublabel. Example: If your label is called “France/Paris”, it will be created as 2 different Labels. Please take this into account and delete the “/” sign from your labels to avoid this issue.
Special labels (folders)
There are special labels: Inbox, Trash, SentItems, Spam, Starred, etc. (Note: Spam is not migrated)
How does Cloudiway select the right destination folder for mail during migration?
1. Cloudiway gives the priority to the Sent Items folder. Imagine that you send a mail and apply a personal label to it.
Cloudiway estimates that this is a sent item and migrates the mail in the Sent Items folder.
2. If the mail doesn’t have the SentItems label, Cloudiway looks for personal labels (rather than Inbox, Starred, Important, etc.).
If a personal label is found, Cloudiway estimates that there was a wish to store/categorize the mail in this specific label.
For example, if a mail has a label named Inbox and a label named MyFolder, then MyFolder is selected.
Said differently, if a user has set a personal label, it means that the user has made the decision to sort it in a dedicated folder. Therefore the personal folder always takes precedence over Inbox.
3. If there is no personal label, Cloudiway checks if the mail is in the Inbox.
If so, it migrates the mail to the Inbox.
4. Finally if the mail doesn’t have the inbox label, it is migrated to the zNolabel folder.
What happens to Starred and Important labels?
These labels are simply ignored.
For example, if a mail has only the Important or Starred label, it is moved to the zNolabel folder. Cloudiway considers that it doesn’t have any label.
If mail has the Important label and a personal label or is in the Inbox, then the mail is migrated to the personal or Inbox folder
Trash folders
In the global settings of Cloudiway, you have the option to migrate or ignore the Trash folders.
Label migration between different languages
Cloudiway automatically discovers special folders (Inbox, Sent Item, Draft, Spam, Trash, Important, Starred, etc…) in the source and the target and automatically makes the correct mapping.
