I work for Worldstart, and I get a LOT of e-mail. We’re talking hundreds upon hundreds of messages – all of which Gmail keeps in one place or another for me to access at any time.
So, when I finally go in to do a little spring cleaning, I’m met with a nightmare. I select all and delete…
…100 messages at a time…
But I’ve found a way to delete ALL my old, useless messages all at once, so I thought I’d share.
In Gmail, make sure you’re in the folder which you’d like to delete all your messages, (spam, trash, etc.) and click the box shown in the image below…
…and click All – this will select all the messages on screen.
Now, notice that at the top of your inbox there’s a message that says “All 100 conversations on this page are selected.” and next to it a link that says “Select all XXXX conversations in (insert folder name here)”
Click it to select ALL messages in that folder.
…and then click the trash can icon to delete.
Voila!
Note: Make sure you’re ready to permanently delete these messages – otherwise you’re going to be one unhappy camper!
~Andrew
Tags: Delete Messages, gmail, Trash Can
Thank you Andrew – muchas gracias! Now if you could only tell me why gmail suddenly stops images from appearing in mails, I discovered that it ticked (involuntarily on my part) the don’t show images box in options. But the strange thing is that copying say your advice above and pasting it in Word the images didn’t transfer with the text as they used to. Today hwoever they have done – why?
This ‘Select All’ box appears in only one view.One needs to change the view if it didn’t appear in the current view.
I want to delete ALL the messages in the inbox as well as the spam and junk but there is no place to click on that will do that. I hate to have to click on each email individually, that would take a week. Please tell me there is a way to delete all the emails at once.
Thank you – muchisimas gracias.
Emptying a folder is a clumsy several-step process in Gmail, whereas Yahoo Mail and Hotmail have an “Empty” link that requires a single click, and after an “are you sure” confirmation, all messages in that folder are deleted, regardless of how many messages there are.
That’s how easy it should be, but Gmail apparently likes to complicate it.