With over 1.2 billion users, Gmail is among the world’s most used email service. Whether for business or personal, there’s a high chance you’re a part of this huge crew.
Unless you’re a very organized person, your inbox will fill up sooner rather than later. With a ton of emails from your boss, friends, companies, and that poor Nigerian prince trying to give you a million dollars, your inbox has seen it all.
If it’s time for some serious cleaning, Google has you covered.
mass delete all emails read intelligently
If you’ve read our other removal tutorials, you’ve probably seen that many platforms lack a bulk removal feature. some companies exclude them on purpose, while others may not be aware of the needs of their users.
that is not the case with google. gmail comes equipped with everything you need to easily get rid of all your read emails.
You’ve probably used the search function many times to navigate your emails. but did you know that it can also be your best weapon for mass email deletion?
how to use the search function to delete all read emails?
Using the search function to filter your emails is the most convenient way to delete them. This doesn’t just apply to reading emails, but there are also many other categories of email that you can clear this way. to select only the emails you have read, you would use the tag function. this is what you have to do:
- Sign into your Gmail Account.
- Go to your inbox.
- In the Search bar at the top of the screen, type label:read.
- Click theSelect All checkmark next to the refresh button above your emails.
- Tap the trash can icon to delete your emails.
Note that there won’t be a pop-up asking you to confirm the deletion, so be careful to only select the emails you want to delete.
Even then, this doesn’t delete the emails permanently. instead, I would put them in the trash folder, where they will be for 30 days and only then will they be deleted forever. if you want to delete them immediately, just go to the trash folder and repeat the above process. Instead of a trash can icon, you’ll see a “delete forever” button that you can click.
delete all read emails from a user
The great thing about the search feature is that you can use multiple commands at once to further narrow down the selection of emails. a good example is the from command, which allows you to see all your emails from one sender.
To delete all read emails from a certain sender, type from:username label:read in the search bar.
When you see the list, repeat the process from the last section to delete the emails. Since you can have up to 50 emails on a page, only emails on a page will be deleted. if you have many more emails than that, you can choose to select all conversations that match this search option to remove all emails that meet the criteria.
deleted email recovery
If you deleted emails by mistake, you can restore them with just a few clicks. this is how it’s done:
- Go to the Trash folder.
- You’ll see all the emails removed from your inbox and folders. Click on the checkmark next to the emails that you want to restore.
- Go to Move to.
- Choose the destination folder.
this will retrieve all the emails you accidentally deleted, after which you can empty your trash to get rid of the spam forever.
the last word
As you can see, deleting read emails is a simple process that doesn’t require much time or effort. there’s no need to mess with third-party software, extensions, or anything other than native gmail features.
The same goes for all other email categories you want to delete. you can use the search feature to find unread emails (label:unread), emails with large attachments (larger:xxxmb), and all sorts of other criteria to filter emails .
if you want to delete all emails from your gmail account, all you have to do is click the select all check mark above your emails, go to select all xxxx conversations in all emails and then click the trash can icon. this will allow you to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.