I finally got a new phone.
All was good and I was excited that the phone-selling-guy transferred everything over to my pretty, new device.
And then I glanced at the bottom of the screen:
Y’all, that’s just embarrassing.
Now, in case you’ve been around a while, you know that in general those red numbers don’t annoy me at all. I don’t even see them.
But that was when it would show an 81 or a 94. I knew that the 81s weren’t real because on my desktop I saw “More than 9999” all the time.
Nope. It wasn’t until I saw that five figure red blurb that I started getting annoyed. I am “proud” to say that I am now UNDER 8,000 EMAILS!!
What? You were looking for a tutorial on how to get to Inbox Zero? Oh. You’re never going to find that around here.
But I did work on deleting huge numbers of emails. The thing is, I’d actually been deleting for months, a few hundred at a time. I thought I was doing good until I saw that blankety-blank number show up on my new phone.
I spent a few hours the next Saturday night working on it.
(Oh, how my young adult self would have been horrified by that!)
Here is what I did on my laptop. (I’ve never found a good way to bulk delete on my phone since it doesn’t pull up all the emails at once.)
That’s the main thing right there. If you click on the magnifying glass icon that appears to the left of the subject line, it will pull up ALL of the emails from that sender. (That address. Some senders have multiple email addresses that they use.)
Once you see all the emails from that address, check the box at the top left, above the emails, to highlight all the emails from that sender.
It gets a little wonky at this point. Sometimes, it will ask you if you’re sure you want to delete, sometimes it won’t. Sometimes it will go straight back into your inbox and the emails will be gone, sometimes, you’ll see this:
And sometimes it takes a while to “update” so the emails are actually gone from your inbox.
Keep chugging through and experience the joy that comes from seeing that crazy number go down by hundreds at a time!
But I have one last tip. One last very important tip for the people who (like me) have let it go for . . . years: Work in reverse.
Go to the right hand side of your inbox and click on “view”:
This will bring the oldest emails to the front of your inbox. Use the same methods above. Going in reverse helped me get through TONS of deletions very quickly.
Also, it’s worth the time it takes to unsubscribe from lists like the Dress Barn one in the picture above. Obviously, I didn’t open those. I took three seconds to open one and scroll to the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of the email.
How many unread emails are in your inbox??
Some other similar posts:
How to Delete Emails in Bulk in Gmail
How to Reduce Paper Clutter
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--Nony
Can I say I’m really surprised at another number on your screen … 81 text messages?! I don’t even get that in a month! I need to get more friends.
Ha! I talk about that in the post I linked to toward the beginning!
omgosh I just read the link … that’s hilarious! My kids get on my case … ‘you don’t delete your text messages??!?? *gasp*’ … now I can say well at least I open them LOL
Wow, I thought my Gmail account was bad at 6,203! My junk email account (Yahoo) is sitting around 5,000! Need to start purging!
Thanks !! I have too much email. You explained it so much better than my hubby and with no rolling eyes. lol
Wow. Thanks so much for this. I practically ran over (metaphorically) to my yahoo inbox!
Well, I had 12,078 but now I’m down to 9966. Thanks so much for the info.
Way too addicting…at least for someone who has to go back 12 years. 🙂 I keep trying to get the 9,999+ to go away, but it’s not happening. This morning person has hit midnight & is hangin’ it up. LOL. But thanks for the tip!
I started doing this the last time you posted about it. The blankety blank “check all” box wouldn’t work. I have more emails than you. I just didn’t have time. But I’m on vacation in a couple of weeks, and cleaning out my inbox is on the to do list.
Sometimes that happens to me too and it drives me bonkers!
LIFE CHANGING. I have tried to do this 50 at a time (which is all yahoo would show me on a page) but never made a dent. I’m currently at 25264, and I had deleted my yahoo mail account from my phone and ipad out of embarrassment at that number. THANK YOU! So happy to find someone whose brain is wired like mine.
Yay!! So glad it has helped you!!
Michelle, can you apply rules to the emails so that a whole bunch go into a folder and then delete the folder? Might be a faster option.
Thank you sooooooo much for this!!!!
Where can I find what you posted about cleaning out gmail boxes?
https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2014/05/deleting-lots-of-emails-at-one-time-in-gmail/
My number has never been that high, but it’s been plenty high enough! Ironically, I’m cleaning out my inbox as I came across your post! I love you, Nony/Dana!
I got 47913 emails on my yahoo account and I came out to this website, these just helped me save alot of time scrolling down 5 years worth of emails.. I really need to unsubscribe some Emails because they really take a lot of space in your inbox. Thanks Nony, I can now sync my yahoo to my gmail account!
Love it! I’ve been deleting emails for over an hour and I’m down to just over 22,000. Yup. Did want to mention one very gratifying part of this process that I didn’t see in your instructions: When you search on an email sender and get that list of emails from them, before deleting them all be sure to notice the number of emails in the search results. There’s just something gratifying in knowing I’m about to delete 608 emails in one fell swoop. Kind of takes the “over” out of “overwhelming.” 🙂
Have a friend who is always winning baby stuff contest I tried when we started ttc and we’re first expecting went easy at first then it was hours a day everyday day and all I have or had was a bar of soap. After a month or more I gave up. I said I don’t think I would have won anything else to speak of but the friend who wins stuff won me a car seat and got me cloth diapers she got in a trade for some thing else she one just now letting my self delete and un subscribe all what I really need I have
If it makes you feel better, I currently have 118,620 unread messages in my Yahoo inbox. I’ve probably purged at least 15,000 from where it was. My problem is that it will only delete 50 at a time when I use the magnifying glass. Then it puts them in trash, and I have to click search mail again to get the next batch of 50. Is there a way around this?
This is the first time on your site and I, obviously, need to read often! Thanks!
Correction: I can delete 100 at a time.
So happy to have found this. I have 88,000 emails that need to go!
After an encounter with a smart aleck phone store clerk last year I opted for a “head in the sand” approach:
iPhone Settings > Notifications > Mail > Badge App Icon – OFF!
Voila! No more unread emails! 😉 Hee hee.
Honestly though, I’ve made a several abandoned attempts to clean my inbox over the years. After reading this post and all the comments I know I’m not alone! Glad I found this site. Thank you for renewing my resolve!
Did I say in the post that my general goal is to keep it under 10k? So . . . definitely no judgement here!
Don’t feel bad about your 25 thousand. I love numbers and have to share when something strange happens with them. I took a picture when my inbox said 34,567…and that was for the unopened ones. I just cleared out 10,000 in less than 30 minutes!! I seriously can’t thank you enough!!!
Um, I had over 130,000 unread emails. *hangs head in shame*
Bless you.
The “Magnifying Glass” trick is so helpful! Thank you!
Thank you, thank you, thank you
Thank you so much! What an awesome feeling when the 9999+ number started actually decreasing! I am now below 8000, my first milestone. I am excited to see how far down I can get!
I had thousands of old emails in my inbox dating back to 2007…found that using a PC allowed me to put a check in the box to mark an email and using the shift key to mark another email marked all the emails between the marked boxes…simply clicking the delete button got rid of as many emails as I wanted very quickly..
Ok guys I think I need this work to begin as I have most everyone beat on this, 35,725 emails! Yikes! Time to get laptop out and start deleting!
I win for most emails lol 90,464 😳
Congratulations!! (Hee hee!!)
omg thanks a million, I have a email dedicated simply to a security system( so all emails from the one sender) and was trudging through 9999+, deleting a few hundred at a time, found this and blam, one click on the magnifier glass icon and then delete and all went in one lot, amazing, xxx
Is there some type of support group for us? I’m at 166,796 and counting……
Not sure I can ever clean mine out, but thankful for the info!
I’m definitely gonna make an attempt!!!!
I only have 444,811 new, unread emails. They just keep on comin’. Help!!!