3DM Design

One of the many useful features in the Opera browser’s built-in mail client is called labels. You get seven of them to play with, but by default only a couple have useful names. Here’s how to change them to whatever you like.

Tested with Opera 9.51 on WinXP, but should work on any desktop platform and (I think) with any version of Opera containing labels

1. Find your Opera language file: Click Tools, Preferences, then next to Language click the Details button. At the top of the new dialog the full path to your language file will be listed, something like: C:\Program Files\Opera\english.lng
2. Make a copy: Navigate to the directory containing your language file, copy and paste the file, then rename the copy to something like “english-modified.lng”. This preserves the original in case you make a mistake while editing, and also makes migrating your changes easier when upgrading Opera.
3. Change label names: Open the new language file for editing (Notepad works). Inside are contained essentially all language-specific strings in Opera, plus comments; this makes for a long file so you’re best off searching for one of the existing label names like “valuable” to find the right section. Once you’ve found it, you’ll see something like this:340864561="Important"
1018805321="To Do"
-1602395097="Send Reply"
1827310912="Call Back"
1665342300="Meeting"
-744394077="Party"
-755539101="Funny"
-160452737="Valuable"
   Just change the quoted text to your desired label names and save the file (note that “Party” is unused).
4. Select the new file in Opera preferences: Back to Tools, Preferences, and click the Details button by language again. In the new dialog click Choose and navigate to your newly edited language file, select it and click OK, then OK on the language and preferences dialogs. Opera should immediately switch to show your renamed labels.

Not too difficult! The downside is that, because Opera’s language file is considered an application file and not part of your user profile, any Opera upgrade may make your modified language file out of date. Read Tamil’s posts about playing with the language file and merging for updates to find out more.

Check out my post on organizing email with Opera’s labels for tips on getting the most out of labels!