It’s easy to delete all of your emails in Gmail, but it’s more likely that you just want to clear out the older ones that are no longer relevant. we’ll guide you through how to delete old emails in Gmail and keep your inbox streamlined. You can even make it automatic.
QUICK ANSWER
To delete old emails in Gmail:
In the search bar, either put older_than:[time period] or before:[date]to find the old emails. The period is a number and a letter, such as 1y for one year, or4w for four weeks. The date is in format YYYY/MM/DD.
Press enter.
Tick the checkbox in the top left above the search results to select them all.
Click on thetrash can icon to delete them.
Keep scrolling for more guidance on this process, and to find out how to delete old emails automatically.
To delete all old emails in Gmail, you can follow these steps:
Search for old emails. You can use two general methods. To find all emails older than a certain amount of time, use older_than:[time period]. To find all emails received before a certain date, usebefore:[date].
You only need a number and a single letter to denote the period. d is day,w is week,m is month, andy is year. For the date, you input using the format YYYY/MM/DD.
For example, if you wanted to find emails older than two years, you would putolder_than:2y into the search bar.
If you wanted to find all emails received before March 2023, you would searchbefore:2023/03/01.
Add the search criteria you want and then pressenter. The emails matching your search will appear.
Now to delete all of the emails appearing in your search. Select them all by clicking on the checkbox in the top left.
Note that if you have more than one page of results (more than 50 emails) you will see a message at this stage telling you that clicking this checkbox has only highlighted all of the emails on that page. It will also give you the option to Select all conversations that match this search in the results. Press this if you want to delete all of them.
Finally, hit theTrash can icon to move all of these emails to the trash.
They will be deleted from the trash folder automatically after 30 days. But you can remove them completely right away by emptying the trash in Gmail.
How to delete old emails in Gmail on mobile
Open the Gmail app and tap the search bar.
Type older_than:1y (or your desired period) and press enter orbefore:2023/01/01 (replace with your desired date) in the search bar and press enter.
If emails are found, you can select and delete them in bulk.
How to automatically delete old emails in Gmail
As easy as the above process is, you don’t need to review it periodically. You can set up a filter to automatically delete old emails in Gmail. It’s really easy to do now that you have the search terms you need.
Start by clicking on theShow search options button. It’s at the far right of the search bar and is represented by an icon of some dials.
You’ll see various fields that you can use to filter the emails. You need to use the search terms from the section above in theHas the words field.
In this example, I want to delete all of my more than five years old emails. So in the Has the words field I have inputted older_than:2y.
Next, pressCreate filter.
You now get a second menu of options to decide what happens to the emails to which your filter applies. Click on the checkbox next toDelete it.
You’ll return to the inbox with a message in the bottom left corner confirming that your filter was created. Old emails matching the filter criteria will be deleted automatically. Just be sure that you’re sure, as you may not be able to recover deleted emails.
FAQs
Yes. Follow the steps in the first section above, but use two search criteria in the search bar instead of one. For example, you could search for all of the emails in the first week of April 2023 using the term after:2023/4/1 before:2023/4/8 then delete the results.
Mass delete emails: Press * and a on your keyboard simultaneously to select all emails on the current page.Then press # to delete the selected emails. Archive emails: Press * and a simultaneously to select all emails on the current page. Then press e to archive the selected emails.
Go to the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab.Scroll to the bottom and pick Create a new filter.Use the Has the words field in the pop-up window to enter the timeframe. As examples, you can enter “older_than:1y” for messages older than a year or “older_than:6m” for those older than six months.
Step 1: Open the Gmail app on your Android or iOS device.Step 2: Tap on the email you want to delete to open it.Step 3: Tap the trash icon to remove this email from your Gmail account.
How far back does Gmail keep emails? Gmail can keep emails indefinitely. However, your individual email messages may be deleted after 2 years of inactivity. If your account (across all Google products) exceeds 15GB, you'll be unable to receive new emails.
By deleting old emails, you free up storage capacity, ensuring that new and important messages can be received without any issues. Cybersecurity and Privacy: Old emails might contain sensitive information such as personal data, financial details, or passwords.
Click the Old Mail filter located above the search box. The 'Older than 6 months' filter is chosen by default (you can click the down arrow and select the other time period). Mark the checkboxes next to the senders whose messages you'd like to clean up, and then look at the blue action bar at the bottom.
Can you unsubscribe from multiple emails at once Gmail? No, Gmail does not have a built-in feature to mass unsubscribe Gmail subscriptions at once. To mass unsubscribe from Gmail, you need a Gmail unsubscriber app like Clean Email.
Type "before:YYYY/M/D" (replace YYYY/M/D with the desired date, such as 2022/2/22) in the search bar and hit Enter . Click the top checkbox. Click the 'Select all messages that match this search' option. Tap on the Trash bin icon to delete emails you no longer need.
Unroll.me is a helpful bulk unsubscribe app available on mobile or via web access. The application proactively identifies messages it thinks you won't like. Then, it provides you with a list of senders. From this list, you can pick which ones you want to keep getting messages from and ones you want to unsubscribe from.
Introduction: My name is Carlyn Walter, I am a lively, glamorous, healthy, clean, powerful, calm, combative person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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