Between various emailing lists, email notifications from multiple social sites, and other “non-email” content,
our email inboxes have become quite bloated. One way to sort out different kinds of emails is inbox categories.
This article will show how inbox categories function in the eM Client desktop and mobile applications and how to
make the most of the categories feature.
Missing Messages from Inbox?
You might have noticed that there are fewer messages than you expected in your inbox. Before panicking, consider
checking the top tab of your inbox – if the Categories feature is enabled, the message might
have been assigned a category and sorted into a separate tab.
The category view helps you filter out the marketing newsletters you subscribed to, occasional notifications
from social networking sites, and other emails that typically aren't a priority.
The default categories tabs for Gmail accounts are Primary, Promotions, and
Social. For all other accounts, they will be Primary and
Other. But you can customize these, of course. We’ll illustrate how further down in this
article.
Default Gmail account categories view:
Default non-Gmail account categories view:
The default Gmail account layout, which we call “Gmail style” in eM Client, copies the same
Gmail inbox categories view you might be used to from the Gmail webmail.
The default view for all other accounts is very loosely inspired by Outlook’s “Focused Inbox”, with
Primary containing the more important categories that might require your attention first and
the rest in Other tab.
The view can always be changed to a different one that you prefer – for example “Gmail style” for all accounts.
Changing and Disabling the Categories View
The category tabs view can be customized for each email account separately in the main window by right-clicking
the tabs or the top of the message list:
At the bottom part of the drop-down menu, you will also find the “Hide Categories Bar”
option which allows you to instantly turn off the categories view in the specific inbox.
Inbox Categories in the eM Client desktop app
eM Client supports Personal, Promotions, Social, Updates, and
Forums categories. Any messages that have not yet been categorized will be in the “Not categorized
yet” state. This means the categorization process has not been started at all (for example after
importing a large number of messages). Messages that do not fit into any of the available categories will be
shown as having “No Category”.
How to turn off inbox categories?
The categories feature can be enabled (and disabled) for the whole app by heading to Menu > Settings >
Mail > Categories and checking the “Show categories” option:
Assigning and Changing Categories
When the Categories feature is enabled, messages are sorted into categories automatically. In the case of Gmail
accounts, the sorting is done by Google and then synchronized with the eM Client app. All non-Gmail accounts’
messages are sorted by eM Client’s algorithm.
If the automatic categorization fails, try using the Repair function – right-click on the Inbox and select
Properties > Repair > Categorize messages.
And how to move emails from Promotions to Primary, for example?
Changing category for individual messages can be done either by right-clicking the message and
choosing “Category”, after which the available categories can be chosen:
Or change the category by dragging and dropping the message to the target tab.
Once you drop the message to the intended category tab (or confirm the category for combined tabs), a
confirmation window will pop up. It shows the different options you have in terms of whether the category change
will be applied to future or older messages as well, or just the selected message:
By default, the drag-and-drop category change creates a new rule for all future messages received from or sent
to that same email address. These messages will be assigned the target category.
You also have the option to change the category for all past messages associated with that
email address. To do this, simply press and hold the “Shift” key while dragging and dropping
the message.
Additionally, if you press and hold the “Alt” key (on Windows) or the
“Control” key (on macOS) while dragging and dropping, only the category of the selected
message will be changed, and no new rule will be created.
In case of combined tabs (Primary, Other, or All), a pop-up window will open, asking
to specify the category first:
Note: Changing categories for messages in Google accounts is only available with paid
licenses.
Custom Rules for Categories
In Settings > Mail > Categories, you will find all of your Custom rules and category settings
in one place.
By clicking the “Modify” button in the Custom Rules section, you can edit the Custom rules:
Each category can be manually assigned here – it is also possible to limit the categorization beyond the default
rule (“Sent to and received from”) to only “Received from” or “Sent
to”
Category rules can only be applied to a full email address – they do not work with domains or partial email
addresses.
Note: For Gmail accounts, the custom category rules cannot be viewed at
all.
This is how the Gmail categories work: the eM Client app sends the new category rule information to the
Google server, which saves and applies them for future messages, but it does not provide a way to access and
view them, not on the web interface nor third-party apps like eM Client.
Additionally, changing categories for messages in Google accounts is only available with paid licenses.
Customizing Category Tab Defaults
In the Categories section, choose which category tabs will be shown by default:
Additionally, by selecting the “Custom” option in the drop-down menu, you are able to
separately choose categories tabs’ visibility for your Gmail and non-Gmail accounts and global folders.
For all accounts and folders, it is possible to also specify which categories will be displayed under the
Primary and Other tab (in the case of the Primary & Other tabs view), based on
your priorities:
Below the tabs view settings, you will also find the display options for recent and unread messages. You have
the option to choose which of these will be displayed next to the category tab’s name – the number of recent
messages, the number of unread messages, or neither.
The message counter’s style can be adjusted as well – a badge showing the number, a
number in parenthesis, or a dot without any number to indicate there are
unread or recent messages in the particular category tab.
Inbox Categories in the eM Client mobile app
The mobile app offers nearly identical settings to the desktop app.
The view of all categories can be changed by tapping and holding the top of the inbox – the Category
tabs menu will pop up:
You will find the Categories section in the main settings menu:
The default visible tabs can be adjusted as well:
By tapping on the Custom Rules option, adjustments can be made to the Custom rules of each
category:
After selecting a message in the Inbox, you can re-categorize it – tap the three dots icon in
the upper right corner, then tap the Category option and select which category you wish to
assign the message:
Inbox categories are a useful tool that will help you prioritize which emails you view
primarily and which ones you postpone for later.
Thanks to the inbox categories feature, various notifications from forums and pesky promotional emails will not
clutter your inbox anymore. Category tabs can be adjusted for each of your email accounts,
making it easy for you to set different styles for work and personal inboxes.
And if using the categories just isn’t your thing? Turn them off in a few clicks. With eM Client, your inbox
will always look just the way you prefer.
New to eM Client?
Try it out! It's free and fabulous.
If you’re ready for more, buy Personal or Business
license and enjoy:
And in the meantime, check out our YouTube channel for how-to videos.