Automatically apply parent label to sublabel in Gmail

Question

When labeling a message with a nested label the message does not appear in the parent label, which in my opinion would be the power having a label hierarchy.

Is there a way to automatically apply the parent label when moving a message to a sublabel?

For example, given the following labels...

Pending
    Today
    Week

I would like every message labeled Today to also appear in Pending, without having to apply a filter manually.

Answer 1

I managed to achieve a similar functionality this by enabling the Quick Links lab and then setting a quick link to the following seach:

label:pending OR label:pending-today OR label:pending-week

Answer 2

I've achieved this by creating a new filter with all child labels linked with OR and (edited to clarify) applying parent label to it, i.e.:

label:parent-child1 OR label:parent-child2 and so on...

No Quick Links thingy (found that solution also in some other sites) and so far everything works as expected.

Answer 3

For me the best solution is to make two identical filters, one for each label:

• One that applies the parent label
• Another that applies the nested label

Answer 4

When you are dragging emails from inbox which are already labeled as the parent label (I automatically label it with a filter), try selecting that specific email (having a tick box checked), then drag the email to nested label. By doing this it will apply both labels.

Answer 5

If you don't mind a bit of editing:

1. Go to settings → Filters and blocked address
2. Check all the filters that apply the sublabels
3. Export the filters
4. Edit the XML and replace all the <parent>/<sublabel> labels to <parent>, then save the file
5. Go to setting → Filters and blocker address → import new filters
6. Import the edited files

Voila, you have duplicated all the sublabel filters to parent label filters.