How to Delete Old Emails in Gmail

Have you ever felt that your email inbox gmail it's a mess? Can't keep it organized? You are not alone, probably everyone who uses e-mail, whatever the reason, has gone through or goes through this overload.

In this tutorial, you will find out how to delete old emails on gmail manually and so organize your inbox. In addition, you will also learn how to make your gmail automatically delete your older emails without you having to worry about them.

Why Organize Gmail?

Many people don't know, but the space available on the Google Drive, Photos, Docs and other tools of Google share the same storage. So if we make a service super crowded, it means that we will not have space available for storage in other services.

It is also worth noting that keeping your email inbox gmail organized helps in your productivity, allowing you to prioritize your tasks more efficiently. And the best: without wasting time looking for specific emails among so many others that can be discarded.

To simplify this organization, there are some operators, or commands, that we can use in the search bar of the gmail to carry out specific actions according to their functions, they are:

• after: to show emails after a specific date;
• before: to show emails before a specific date;
• older_than: to show emails older than a specified period;
• newer_than: to show emails newer than a specified period.

The commands after: e before:, to be used correctly, must be filled with a date in the format MM / DD / YYYY ou YYYY/MM/DD. See the examples below:

• after:06/28/2023
• after:2023/06/28
• before:06/28/2023
• before:2023/06/28

Unlike the previous operators, the older_than: e newer_than: must be used with a number and a timestamp, being “d"for days,"m” for months and “y” for years. Check out the examples below:

• older_than: 2d
• newer_than:2m
• older_than:2y

These commands are used in email search box do gmail. It's located at the top of your inbox or any other folder in your email.

How to Delete Old Emails in Gmail

Before we start, you need to keep in mind from what period or date you want to delete emails from your inbox, in the following example I will use the period of 3 years, that is, 3y.

1. After locating the email search bar, you must type the command with the date or period you want to exclude. After searching the command in the search bar the only emails that will be displayed are those that match the entered parameter.

2. Now, just you click on the checkbox, in the top-bottom corner of the bar. Todos os emails will be selected automatically, even those on other pages.

3. Finally, all that remains is to delete them when click on the trash can icon.

You have just deleted all emails according to the command you searched for in the search bar, in the example, all emails that are more than 3 years old.

Automatically delete old emails

To make your life even easier, and not have to repeat this whole process periodically, it is possible to delete old emails automatically. From some button settings search options it is possible to create a filter that will automatically delete your oldest emails on gmail.

1. Click on the button Show search options, which is present at the end of the email search, represented by a selector icon.

2. After clicking on this icon, a dialog box will appear with some parameters that we can fill in. locating the parameter Contains the words we will enter our code.

Here, we recommend using the command “older_than: “ for the filter to act automatically with emails that exceed the stipulated parameter. In the example, the filter will be applied to all emails in the inbox that are more than 3 years old.

3. After entering the code, click on create filter.

4. When clicking on the button, another dialog box will appear showing the actions that can be performed when the parameters of the command typed by the user are met. In this area, you select Delete and if you want, you can add the filter actions to conversations in the gmail.

5. Now, just click again on Create Filter and ready.

You will be returned to your inbox with a message at the bottom confirming that your filter was created. If there are still emails that match your filter criteria, they will be automatically deleted.

So, did you manage to configure your filter correctly? Leave here in the comments the number of emails that these commands helped you delete.

Sources: Android Authority | Depositphotos.

See too

Text proofread by: iris xavier (26 / 05 / 2023).