How can I filter my Gmail messages that aren't labeled?

Question

I'd like to sort all of my Gmail messages that don't have label, so I can process them (I miss some every now and then). I can sort by every label by clicking on it at the left, but how do you sort the unlabeled ones?

Answer 1

The Gmail advanced search help page says:

label: Search for messages by label*

There isn't a search operator for unlabeled messages

Example: from:amy label:friends
Meaning: Messages from Amy that have the label "friends"

Example: from:david label:my-family
Meaning: Messages from David that have the label "My Family"

Sorry!

Answer 2

One way you can do it is by using the minus operator on the label operator. So for example:

-label:tag-a -label:tag-b -label:tag-c

or for one-word tags:

-label:{taga tagb tagc}

This is probably only practical if you don't have a lot of labels.

Additionally, if they don't change often, you can include a link to this search so that it easily accessible from Gmail. There is a Google Labs product which puts a box of links on the left side and allows you to customize them. Just add a link to this search query and you'll be able to access your untagged messages easily.

It seems like there is a greasemonkey script which will work too. Here is the script's website. It creates a special label, Unlabelled, to search for all the conversations without a real label.