How to Archive ALL Your Gmail Messages
Lets face it. One of the offshoots of having a humongous inbox size limit is that sometimes you’ll be too lazy to delete those spammy messages and archive those messages that you’ve already read. After almost two years of having my Gmail account open, I realized my inbox already says it already has 20,000 unread messages in my inbox. Yes, you read that right: unread. That doesn’t include messages I’ve already read, and those already sent to archive (taken out of “inbox” view).
Sometimes I forget to click the “report spam” button. Sometimes I don’t click on a message because I can understand the content from the preview snippet itself. And yes, sometimes I get too lazy.
Depending on your email habits you might also have a problem with maintaining such a big inbox. However, it would be near impossible to clean up an inbox with 20,000 unread entries. Now the drastic approach here is move everything away from sight, into Archive view. This way, nothing is deleted (that’s the point with having a humongous inbox, right?), and I can still search for my messages by keyword.
Here’s a simple four-step way to doing this.
First, select all the messages currently on-screen by clicking the “All” selection option either above or below the message list.
Gmail will now tick the checkbox on all the messages currently on screen. However, you might still have thousands not covered by the current view. Gmail will ask you if you want to select all the conversations, including those out of view.
Click the link, and Gmail will now select everything, including message threads outside of the current screen.
Next step would be to click the “Archive” button to send all the selected conversations outside of “Inbox view.”
Wait, that’s just three steps, not four! I guess the fourth step would be to repeat the sequence regularly for maintenance, or whenever you get overwhelmed by thousands of messages in your inbox.
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And how do I BACKUP my enitre mailbox?
I tried downloading itusing a POP3 mailbox with OUtlook 2003, but it isn’t downloading the entire mailbox. I’m not sure why.
Sarit,
By default, you can only download messages via POP up to a certain extent. This is usually from the point you activate POP onwards (Gmail cannot make older messages available via POP). We’ll look for a way by which Gmails can be backed up locally.
If you look at the option, you can set it from the date of account activation for pop3 downloading.
You can set Gmail such that you can download your whole mailbox via POP. One thing I have noticed is that it does them in batches of 300-400. If you leave your mail client running, it will eventually download all of the messages.
I think you my friend are stating something incorrect. If you say you have ’20,000′ unread messages, then why does your gmail say you have ’503′ unread messages? it should say ’20,000′ in bold.
Actually, I had archived them already. I took the screenshots as I replicated the move. I forgot to take screenshots with those 20k messages (actually, more of 19,900 something, but I rounded it up).
Cheers.
I use Gmail all the time. And I archive all messages I may want to reference later.
That’s the point of
Gmail! These archives are searchable far better than any other e-mail system.
To really power your archiving, though, tag the e-mails first by setting up a system of tags that makes sense, i.e. work, personal, to do … or even get more granular.
First tag, then archive. It’s quite powerful, especially when you consider how Gmail keeps conversations together…
You call that a tutorial? It basically tells us about a feature that we already know, and steps that are blindingly obvious, why would you dedicate a blog entry to this basic GMail function?
Not everyone is as perceptive as you, Netsharc.
OK, I understand what you mean. I CAN live without archiving my entire mailbox, but I was wondering if there was anything I was missing besides that little checkbox in the settings page.
Thank!
What a useless artcle! you are just explaining a feature which is so obvious in Gmail. Any user who has already clicked on the ALL button will see that option! Why dont you try to give soem tweaks or tricks? Better woul dhave been you explained how to tag a message automatically (on arrival) and then that it gets ARCHIVED automatically!
I thought you must be nuts when you said you had 20000 UNREAD mails in your inbox! If you dont read mails, why do you want an address? A total time wasting “so-called” tutorial.
Fred, thanks for the tip. That’s a good post idea.
ananthan, don’t you get spam? Sometimes they don’t automatically get directed to the spam folder. And sometimes messages from mailing lists tend to be useless (or maybe I’m too lazy to move them elsewhere).
[...] Organize your Gmail inbox with the Archive January 20th, 2007 by Lifehacker The Google Tutor has come up with an interesting way to organize that glut of messages in Gmail – simply shoot them all over to your Gmail Archive: Depending on your email habits you might also have a problem with maintaining such a big inbox. However, it would be near impossible to clean up an inbox with 20,000 unread entries. Now the drastic approach here is move everything away from sight, into Archive view. This way, nothing is deleted (that’s the point with having a humongous inbox, right?), and I can still search for my messages by keyword. This would be particularly useful for anyone who has an extremely high volume of email coming in on a regular basis; I implemented this about three weeks ago and it’s worked pretty well so far. We’ve certainly written up about freeing up space in Gmail before, but I’m sure that there’s a few more tips out there – give ‘em up in the comments. — Wendy Boswell How to Archive ALL Your Gmail Messages [Google Tutor] [...]
Can u tell me how to retrive the archived mails after some time?
great post…. really helpful. tell the guy who thinks this was a waste to eat a d*ck
want to know how could i browse through or recover my archieved messages..
nobody mentioned it obviosly..
either u r so smart , or it’s me who is so …..
any of them plz dont laugh @ me & just give the advice
thanX a lot
i have archived my mails now i dont remember the names of few emails how can i see my archived mails .. is there any way i can see all my archived mails at once? help me
will archive work with the emails with attachments like photographs etc?
I’m with prasanth, abas and siddhartha…
how do I find my archived files?????
Hi,
I’m new to Gmail but not afraid to find my way. I archived some items, all went well. But can someone please help me, how can I see them again. I can not find them.
Thanks
A. Johnson
Southern California
Hi,
I found my way!
When you go int All Mail, you will see the items that were selected for Archive.
Thanks
Aj
Thanks… just what I was looking for
I rather thought this post was somewhat useful–esp the part about batch loading of mail in POP.
Another reason this is useful is there are times when you want to use an email client (like Outlook) as your default “mailto:” handler, since gmail’s doesn’t work quite right yet. It’s also easier to send mail from word (send as attachment) when Outlook or Thunderbird is running.
I prefer Outlook because its archiving seems much more intuitive to me than all the mbx or whatever files in T’Bird.
So, sorry naysayers, script kiddies, and snarksters–this is a useful comment. Some folks want to actually get things done with their machines–the rest of you can go read slashdot and mock each other there.
How do I clean up an email and delete previous addresses etc. before sending it on.It is easy on my office computer with outlook, but can’t make it work with Gmail. HELP!
This method does not work. I have tried it numerous times and the only messages that get archived are the ones showing on my screen.
May question is how do I access the archive to reference it again? What steps do I do to re-read my archive messages? Thanks BR
Changing my earlier post post. This method does work but you cannot uncheck any of the emails like I was doing.
How can I retreive archived messages?
Thanks
Can u tell me how to retrive the archived mails after some time?
Iftakher:
Just use the search capability of gmail. It will retrieve archived emails.
Heres one nobody has asked yet. So I archive a message which I have replied to, which goolge calls a “conversation” It’s now archived and gone from my inbox, but if i go to my “sent mail” folder, its still there. How do I clean up my sent mail folder without deleting the conversation?
Thank you so much, I could not figure out how to select ALL the 12,000 emails in my inbox– I didn’t notice that little part come up offering to select ALL.
Thanks again.
I HAD 40K MESSAGES IN MY INBOX…
THANKS DUDE, THAT’S COMPLETELY AAAAAAWWWWWWEEEEESSSOOOOOOMMMMMEEEEEE!!!