This page explains how you can
- search for specific “sets” of emails
- select some or all of them
- deleting them
Important – Conversation view
If you have it on, you might want to turn off “Conversation view” while you do this.
Conversation view displays all “replies” in a single conversation or thread as a single “mega” email.
Which means the individual emails in the conversation/thread are not obvious.
And if you delete a mega email – all emails in that conversation or thread are deleted!
Gmail search terms to find a set of emails
| Search term | Example | Format needed | search for emails … |
| after | after:2020/1/1 | dates written as YYYY/MM/DD | On or after a specific date |
| before | before:2019/1/1 | dates written as YYYY/MM/DD | On or before a specific date |
| newer_than | newer_than:1y
newer_than:3m |
d (day), m (month) and y (year) | In the last year
In the last 3 months |
| older_than | older_than:3y
older_than:10d |
d (day), m (month) and y (year) | More than 3 years ago
More than 10 days ago |
| larger | larger: 5M | M = Mb = Megabytes | Larger than 5 Mb |
| from | from:massimo | From someone |
And you can combine these with a space between each. For example … older_than:2y larger:10M
More details here https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?hl=en-GB
Select Gmail emails
You can tick individual emails or use the ‘select all’ tick box (at the top)
Note: the ‘select all’ option, ticks only those emails shown on the current page (usually a maximum of 50)
If you then want to select ALL emails in the current set, click the “Select all nnnnn messages” option
Delete Gmail emails
When you delete emails, they are moved to the Trash or Bin folder. They then get permanently deleted after 30 days (which normally should be fine).
So, be aware, they will still take up space on your Google Drive until they are permanently deleted.
If you need them deleted permanently immediately, go to the Trash or Bin folder and empty it (look for blue button)