How To Quickly Delete All The Garbage From Your Gmail

Get your overflowing inbox back under control.

You never thought this day would come, but alas: Your Gmail inbox is full.

You've gotta delete things -- fast -- but with so many emails, it's hard to know where to start. If you use Gmail's "priority" inbox feature, a system that marks your most important messages and brings them to the top of your inbox, you might expect to be able to just trash all your non-priority emails. Sadly, it's not that easy. Gmail doesn't offer a seamless way to select those emails and delete them.

But don't panic. The Huffington Post has devised a five-step guide to cleaning out your Gmail inbox in a jiffy.

The results depend on how much non-priority email you have, but when one of our writers did it, his inbox went from:

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Keep in mind that this technique is most effective for those people who don't regularly delete emails. If you do, make sure there are no messages in your Trash folder (see step four) before you start.

Here's how it's done:

Step 1 - Separate your priority messages from your non-priority messages.

To do this, you'll need to click the little arrow near the right end of the search box:

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Gmail will show you advanced search options. Now select the "Doesn't have" field and type in "label: important." This will supposedly -- we say supposedly for a reason you'll find out later -- select all the messages that aren't marked as "important" (those are the emails with the little yellow pentagon next to them, in case you didn't know).

If you want to save your Gchats too, type in "label: chats" as well.

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Step 2 - Move to trash.

Once you've searched for all your chats and non-priority emails, you'll want to select them so you can move them to the trash.

To do this, click on the check mark at the upper left. Then click on "Select all conversations that match this search" at the top of your inbox.

Your screen should look like the image below. Next, click on the trash icon:

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Click OK:

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Step 3 - Do something else for a while.

If your inbox is near capacity, chances are you're moving A LOT of messages, and it's going to take a while. An error message might pop up, but your emails should still eventually transfer to the trash:

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While you're waiting, why not step away from your computer to make some coffee? Or call your Mom? She's the best.

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Step 4 - Save your important messages from accidental deletion.

By now, you should be able to find all the messages you wanted to get rid of by going to your "Trash" folder. That's here:

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Once you're there you'll probably notice something odd: A few priority messages have been deleted, too. Why this happens to your poor important messages we're not sure, but a few always seem to end up in the trash, and it's up to you to recover them!

Luckily, there's an easy way to do just that. In the search field, next to "in: trash," type: "label: important." Select all the messages and move them back to the inbox, where they'll be safe:

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Step 5 - Finally, get rid of all those ugly messages you don't want.

Now with your important messages back in the inbox where they belong, it's safe to delete all the non-priority ones. Select all the messages remaining in Trash and click "Delete forever":

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This might take a while, again. Make a second cup of coffee, then get some props from the office dog because you're almost done:

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Come back to your computer screen and bask in the glory of your tidy inbox:

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Ah, nothing like that clean inbox feeling!

A version of this post originally appeared here.

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