How can I filter and label emails that are sent to a mailing list (which I am a part of)?

Question

My current Gmail e-mail address is a part of a bunch of mailing lists that I need to be a part of. The problem is that I don't know what they are and they are always changing. So, how can I have it set up so that ANY e-mail, regardless of which mailing list it orginates, that comes to that one e-mail address, is applied the same label?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I've found the best option is to find a section of text in the email that is common to them all and filter based on that. For example, you might use:

to:<you>@gmail.com subject:<common text> (<Word #1> OR <Word #2> OR <Word #3>)

You would then add/remove the <Word #>'s/<Subject> depending on what commonality you find.

Answer 2

If the list of mailing list is large I would o the following.

1. Open an email.
2. use the More/Filter Messages like these command
3. Attach the label to the filer
4. Also apply the filter to X matching conversations.
5. After the filter is created then archive all the messages with that label.
6. Repeat until you have crated enough filters to capture all your mailing lists

Each time you create a new filter the number of unfiltered messages will be reduced. If you see a new message come in that isn't caught by an existing filter, make a new one.