How to Delete Emails in Your Gmail Inbox

How to Delete Emails in Your Gmail Inbox
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Deleting Emails

The storage capabilities of Gmail continue to grow every day, allowing users to save and manage more email than ever possible before. There are still times, however, when a user wants to delete email, both from people they know and spam.

Email can be deleted one at a time, or there is a handy little button in Gmail that allows you to delete all messages in either the Inbox or Spam all at one time. Take the steps below to delete unwanted emails in a Gmail account;

1. To select only one email message at a time to delete, click on the box to the left of the email subject to check the box. To delete all existing messages in either the Inbox or Spam, click on Select: All, located under the Archive, Report Spam and Delete buttons.

2. Click on the Delete button. If one email at a time is being deleted, it will automatically be disappear once the Delete button is pressed. If the user is deleting all existing messages at one time, a message box will appear that informs them of how many messages will be deleted and ask “Are you sure you want to delete all messages?”. Click yes. All spam will then be deleted forever or all messages in the Inbox will be moved to the trash.

Deleting mail in the Inbox will not automatically delete it forever, like it does in the Spam. Mail deleted in the Gmail Inbox will be sent to the Trash. To delete Inbox messages forever, the user must delete them in the Inbox and then click on Trash and click “Empty Trash” to delete them forever. A message box appears telling the user the emails will be deleted forever and ask if they are sure. Press yes and the email will be deleted forever.

If you have your Gmail account setup with an email client like Outlook or Thunderbird, you can also use features in the client to select all messages and delete them.

Keep in mind that once any email is deleted in a Gmail account that it will be impossible to recover. If there is any doubt about the future need of the email, just save it. Go ahead, Gmail has the storage capabilities!

Read more about using your Gmail account:

How to Create Mail in Gmail

How to Personalize General Settings in Gmail

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