When the flowers bloom and the birds begin to sing, you know it’s time to clean up your house—and all the gadgets within it. While you’re dusting off your TV and wiping down your keyboard, don’t forget to turn on your PC and make some changes to improve your technology. There are 10 big changes you can make right now, from sprucing up your old phone to cutting off your personal data from shady websites.
Tap or click for our essential tech to-do list. Your email inbox also needs special attention, especially if you have thousands of annoying emails piling up. Luckily, we have the best strategy for growing this important part of your digital life.
A simple trick uses the features built into your inbox to mass delete unnecessary messages. Here’s how to trim the fat and focus only on the messages that matter.
Got a Gmail Account? Here’s a Time Saving Secret
If you want to cut down on hundreds or even thousands of emails, you have two tools: the search filter and the Select All Conversations option. We’ll go to the second one later. First, let’s look at our search box.
Whenever you open Gmail, you’ll see a search bar at the top of the screen. You might not be aware of the different filters that let you search by category, chat messages, size, day, and more. Here’s a full list of search tricks to help you find what you’re looking for ASAP.
For example, if you only wanted to see emails from a certain sender, you would type from: and the person’s email. You can also search for specific words in the subject line by typing subject: next to your keywords. If you want to search for emails with attachments, in Gmail’s search box, type: attachments.
Speaking of which, deleting old emails with attachments is an important security step. Hackers love to route your old emails and collect important PDFs. Think about all the important emails you send: medical bills, taxes, new rent paperwork with your Social Security number, etc.
If you are keeping old emails with this important information, you are putting your identity at great risk. Tap or click here for step-by-step instructions on removing attachments from your email. A quick tip may help: Go to Gmail’s search box and type file type: pdf to quickly find and delete any important documents you’re no longer using.
Now you know how to find what you’re looking for. What will happen next?
Step one is done: You’ve collected all the emails you want to delete. If you have a booming email inbox, you’ll probably see a ton of results.
Don’t worry if you get a few hundred or a few thousand results. You might want to run for the hills at the thought of deleting 50 pages of email. But you don’t have to spend an hour deleting all your unwanted messages — instead, you can click the Choose all conversations option mentioned earlier.
First, check the box at the bottom of the search bar. This pops up a message telling you how many pages have been selected. Tap Select all conversations that match this search.
With just a click of a button, you’ve selected every single email in your inbox that matches your search. Just click on the Trash icon, and you’ve got countless emails deleted in the blink of an eye. Repeat this quick process for any email you want to delete – it’s a time-saving way to boost your security.
Like Gmail, Yahoo Mail also lets you filter your search bar. However, it’s not as simple as typing a code into the search bar.
In the current version of Yahoo, you can use these filters to mass delete emails. Let’s say you want to clear all unread emails. (After all, if they were important, you would have read them already.)
In this case, look to the left of your email inbox. Go to the Smart View drop-down menu. Next, tap on Unread. Now, all read messages have been filtered out, so you can aggregate each unread email into your inbox.
You may get thousands or even hundreds of results. No worries: just click the Select All checkbox and hit the Delete button to remove them.
Now, everything you didn’t want is left in the Trash folder. If you want to delete them permanently, navigate to the Trash folder and select All emails to delete them permanently.
Repeat this process for any other types of email that you want to delete from your Yahoo account. You’ll save hours of work with this nifty trick.
Does Microsoft Outlook Handle Your Mail? Then follow these steps for mass deletion
Like Gmail and Yahoo Mail, Outlook also comes with built-in search filters that you can use to perform mass deletes. Tap here to find specific filters in Microsoft Outlook.
So, let’s say you’re ready to start filtering. It’s easy: just go to your inbox and hit Home.
