Organizing a Gmail account

[Velvis]

I am looking to delete all emails before a certain date in the main inbox but not email that are in folders. Is it possible to get gmail to list emails before a certain date that only appear in the main inbox so they could easily be deleted?

 

[fincoder]

Use an email client? Even if you or your customer prefers the gmail website in general, you could use an email client just for the cleanup you're doing. Outlook (Classic) or emClient. Both can be used for free in trial mode (emClient is also free for ongoing personal use, up to 2 email accounts).

In an email client you get the usual sorting of a list (e.g. by date) and all emails in a single list. Shift-click to select a block of emails. They also have advanced search abilities.

 

[britechguy]

You cannot think of Gmail as being in folders, literally. While Gmail labels end up being shown as IMAP folders, that's not what they are in actuality. Gmail labels are, effectively, collections of symbolic links, and like symbolic links, the only time something referenced by them is actually deleted is when the final instance (the actual message/file) is deleted from the only location where it resides.

But, you can also select messages only older than a certain date and that are only in Inbox and have no other user defined labels applied:

in:inbox has:nouserlabels before:2010-03-01

This should return ONLY those messages in Inbox and with no other labels applied that are older than the date specified.

 

[britechguy]

I am looking to delete all emails before a certain date in the main inbox but not email that are in folders.

BTW, I find this kind of mass deleting to be far easier to manage via Gmail's web interface than in any email client. The search capabilities that are native in Gmail webmail are insanely sophisticated, yet easy to use. I had forgotten about the "has:nouserlabels" option and found it again by asking perplexity.ai whether one could select Gmail messages in inbox but that had no other user labels assigned to them.

 

[timeshifter]

I am looking to delete all emails before a certain date in the main inbox

Are they running out of storage space in their Gmail account? If they're not you may want to consider Archiving the mail rather than Deleting it.

I'm very reluctant to delete ANYTHING for clients. I'm always afraid they may come back and blame me if they need something that's not there.

As I recall Gmail's paradigm seems to have been that you never delete things, just archive. With all the space they give away for free there used to be no reason to delete.

If they insist on deleting you may want to find a way to make a backup of everything before you do it.

 

[HCHTech]

Use the web interface, display the inbox, type "before:2024/03/19" to show only messages older than 3/19/24. Once you have the list you can click on the "Select all conversations that match this search", then delete them. If you want to find messages by age, you can search with "older_than:30d".

 

[britechguy]

As I recall Gmail's paradigm seems to have been that you never delete things, just archive. With all the space they give away for free there used to be no reason to delete.

They've only ever given away 15GB of space, and while that's a lot for pure text or HTML based email messages, it's not infinite. And some time back that 15GB was changed to include Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos, so it's pretty easy for digital hoarders to go over that limit.

The Gmail archive is nothing more than the All Mail repository. If you choose to archive something from Inbox it simply takes the Inbox label (not generally shown when viewing inbox, but does show if viewing another label where that message also has the Inbox label) off of the message and it resides only in All Mail. It still takes up space, though.

I think one of the reasons Google ultimately put a size limit on attachments and wanted you to send "large stuff" as a link to material kept on Google Drive was to make it easier to eliminate ancient "attached stuff" without necessarily needing to delete messages they were attached to. For messages that predate that change, and where attached content was substantial, those can eat space quickly.

I do everything in my power to discourage digital hoarding, mostly because it makes it so much more difficult to separate "the wheat from the chaff" at a later date when you're trying to find a couple of specific grains of wheat. If you know you are not ever likely to need a given email message in the future, delete it as soon as you've read it (and/or acted on what it contains).

 

[fincoder]

that 15GB was changed to include Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos, so it's pretty easy for digital hoarders to go over that limit.

This. I get (residential) customers all the time with Google cloud storage full, to the point where gmail stops working. It's because of photos and videos automatically uploaded to Google Photos from Android phones from which the files originate. I wouldn't call that hoarding. In these cases it's rarely the Gmail storage that is overwhelming the Google cloud.

I do everything in my power to discourage digital hoarding

When it comes to ordinary non-geek users, many of which don't own a computer with enough storage for their photos/videos, it's not hard to exceed 15GB. Even if they have a suitable computer with enough storage or are juggling external storage with it, the process of moving media files out of Google Photos without deleting them is cumbersome or difficult for some to get their heads around.

In short, I wouldn't call 15-50GB of media files hoarding. For non-geek users, the easiest option is to pay for more Google cloud storage. I don't think it costs much, small price to pay for having all their media backed up and available on their devices automatically.

Having said that, some of these users have 365 subscriptions with 1TB cloud. Moving files from Google Photos to OneDrive would be a good solution, especially if easy to do mass movements or archiving based on date or how full the Google cloud is. Now that would be a good app if it was available!

 

[britechguy]

@fincoder:

I don't know of many non-geek users who don't have computers with HDDs that have way more than enough capacity for every photo they've ever taken. And that's even those with 265GB SSDs, as that class of user generally has "less of everything."

You've proven my point when you say, "it's not hard to exceed 15GB" in combined storage, so it's worth knowing what you should and should not keep in that free cloud storage.

And I wouldn't call 15-50GB of MEDIA FILES hoarding, but you need to know what you're putting where, and why. But if you've got 15GB of email, that's hoarding for most users. For my oldest Google account that dates from almost "day one of Gmail" I have 11.86GB across all media, and I'm not as good about "email housekeeping" as what I preach. Much of that isn't email, either, but files I've been sharing on various sites for a very long time now.

 

[fincoder]

But if you've got 15GB of email, that's hoarding for most users.

Agreed, but I've rarely ever seen that in my business if at all (residential customers).

My extensive outlook PST archives plus OST storage is only about 6GB total (one man business and much personal email).

 

[timeshifter]

I don't use Android. I've had a Gmail account from the early days. I set up forwarding from my primary domain based email account to it 19 years ago. Just this year it finally hit the 15GB limit. And I never deleted anything in all that time.

We still don't know why @Velvis 's client wanted to delete stuff. And as I said before I personally am very cautious about deleting people's stuff.

 

[britechguy]

We still don't know why @Velvis 's client wanted to delete stuff.

We still don't know, definitively, it's for a client. There's nothing in the original post that indicates who it's for, specifically.

"I am looking to delete all emails before a certain date in the main inbox but not email that are in folders." That gives no idea of whose account is involved.