I can think of two options available, neither of which are elegant:
- Add a
-to:my-team@example.com
to all the other filters that may archive the message.
- Use a variation of the above but instead of hard-coding the address, add a descriptive label.
There's no option to send an email to the inbox via a filter. Your only option is to prevent the message from being archived in the first place.
Solution #1: This one's pretty simple. So, for example, say you have the filter:
- when mail matches
to:other-team@example.com
, archive the message
You need to change it to:
- when mail matches
to:other-team@example.com -to:my-team@example.com
, archive the message
To use this negation, it may be easier to type in the "has the words" box.
Using this solution doesn't require you to maintain the filter order. The only downside is that if you have multiple email addresses that you need to keep (e.g. my-team2@example.com, my-team3@example.com, etc.), using this method you would need to add all of those to each filter. This can become hard to maintain. That's where solution #2 comes in...
Solution #2:
This one is more complicated and relies on the way Gmail processes filter rules. Basically it processes them from the top down. This means that if you modify one (which causes it to go to the bottom), you will need to remember to reorder your filters, so that it works correctly again.
You create the following filters, in this order:
- when mail matches
to:my-team@example.com
, apply the label dont-archive
.
- when mail matches
to:my-team2@example.com
, apply the label dont-archive
.
- when mail matches
to:my-team3@example.com
, apply the label dont-archive
.
- when mail matches
to:other-team@example.com -label:dont-archive
, archive the message
When creating the last filter, it will warn you about using the label. This message can be safely ignored, since you ordered the filters correctly.
Tip for solution #1:
Of course, if the email addresses are very similar, you might be able to use Gmail's limited stemming in order to use solution #1 with multiple addresses (e.g. instead of using -to:my-team@example.com
, use -to:(my @example.com)
which will also match my-team2@example.com
in this case.
As one option, you could make sure that your email filter turns on "Never send it to Spam" and "Always mark it as Important".
![No Spam, Mark Important](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FYkrV.png)
In your Inbox setting, you can "Override filters" and always include Important emails in the inbox.
![Override Filter, Include Important](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IqWLj.png)
I don't have a way to test this suggestion, but could you give me feedback as to whether this worked for you?
Best Answer
Of course you can add a label based on the
To
address. (Actually, that's probably your only realistic option, since you can't change the columns displayed within Gmail.)Simply create a filter on the address you want to apply a label to. The simplest way is probably to start with a search:
Then press the down-pointing arrow on the right of the search field to open the advanced search form and click "Create a filter with this search".
On the next window, click "Apply the label:" and choose the label you want to use (or create a new one). Check any other things you might want to happen. Optionally, check "Also apply filter to matching conversations" and save your filter.
Now, when a message comes in to that address, your label will also be applied.
You might want to make your filter more dynamic by also checking the
Cc
and/orBcc
fields.More information from Google Help.