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I have nested labels in Gmail, but often run into a situation where I no longer want certain label showing up in the labels list on the left side.
For example, let's assume I have "Year 2014" as a top-level label and have "Project 1" and "Project 2" as sub-labels under "Year 2014". Once "Project 1" is completed, I want that label to be hidden in the labels list, to reclaim real estate in the left-side panel.
Is this possible?
You can hide only first level labels from the label list, which will include all of it’s children, but you can’t hide the children on their own.
The only hack I can think of is to make your sub-labels as first level labels and name them something like FirstLevelLabel_SecondLevelLabel instead of nesting SecondLevelLabel under FirstLevelLabel.
The rest of the answer refers to first level labels.
1. Hover over the respective label
2. Click on the arrow that appears at the right of the label
3. In the drop-down menu, click on Hide under In label list:
If you do a search in Gmail it will show you the first 20 or so results. So start by searching for your label. If you click the 'select all' button (checkbox in the header row) it will tell you there are x number of additional mails, and give you a link to select all of those as well, click this link.
You now have selected all mails matching your required label. Press the archive button to archive all of them.
Try to do a label at TOP-LEVEL called "HIDDEN" and replicate inside this new label all the hierarchy that the "wanted to be hidden" label has. Then, you only have to hide the "HIDDEN" label. It's a mess, but it's a kind of a solution...
So, the "HIDDEN" would be a replica of your root actual labels hierarchy. The thing you have to always do when you want to hide a label, is, to migrate the before emails label to the new hidden one, and then to remove the visible label. (Take into consideration that you may have to have one more hierarchy duplicate inside a "going to be hiden" label...).
I would like to recommend a different approach: Suppose you have or make a top-level parent label, for example "PROJECTS BY YEAR", and within that you nest your "Year 2014", "Year 2015", "Year 2020", "Year 2021", etc. Create a new label called "ARCHIVED PROJECTS" that exists at peer-level to your various YEAR folders.
Then when you are working within, say, "YEAR 2021" and its various sub-level PROJECT FOLDERS (P1, P2, P3, etc), when you complete or close-out P1, you then reassign its parent label to be "ARCHIVED PROJECTS".
It's not as elegant as OP's desire to "Hide" completed projects, but it seems like it might serve OP's original intent to reduce the number of "done" or "inactive folders" from clogging up your active folders list. Yes you would be adding a Label/Folder called Archived Projects, but if I understand your objective (and I may not!), this would clear out finished Projects from appearing in your Current Year Folder.
