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Originally Posted On: https://blog.boxysuite.com/gmail-guide/delete-old-gmail-emails/
If you’ve been using Gmail for years, you’re probably wondering: how do I delete multiple, or thousands, of emails in Gmail?
So, if you’re looking to declutter your inbox or make some space, just follow these instructions. Selecting emails one by one can be tiring, but there are some solutions.
We recommend following this guide with a Gmail for Mac client.
Delete Old Emails
You can easily search for old emails in Gmail and delete them in a batch. In the Gmail search bar, you can type the date in this format: YYYY/DD/MM.
So, for example, if you want to delete all emails that you received before Jan. 1, 2022, you can search before:2022/01/1.
You can even search by how old emails are. If you type older_than:1y, you’ll see all the Gmail emails older than 1 year. You can use m for months or d for days.
If you want to delete them all, click the Check all box, then click Select all conversations that match this search followed by the Delete button.
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Advanced Searches
By combining different queries, you can easily find all messages matching certain criteria and delete them all.
Let’s say you want to delete all messages tagged with newsletter received more than 1 year ago: you can use this query: older_than:1y label:newsletter. You’ll see all the resulting emails and you’ll be able to bulk delete them as explained before.
For a full list of searches, you can do inside Gmail, take a look at this page
Delete All Emails in the Gmail App
To permanently delete all email from your Gmail account, you need to select everything first.
This is easier if you use a Gmail desktop client.
To do this, got to the All Mail tab, click the tickbox at the top of the page to select all emails on that page.
As you can see in the image below, you’ll see that a message appears that says Select all XXX conversations in All Mail.
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Click on that link to select all messages in your Gmail account, and finally click on the Delete button to delete them all.
Delete Old Emails Automatically
If you want to delete old messages automatically, you can totally do that by setting up a filter.
To do this, open the Gmail settings, go to Filters and Blocked Addresses, and then click on Create a new filter.
In this interface, in the Has the words field, use one the time queries we explained before, like older_than:90d, and finally click on Create Filter.
Finally, click on the Delete it option to delete these matching messages automatically.
