Efficiently Batch Edit Your Gmail Conversations with This Simple Selection Trick

What to Know

• To select every email, click thecheckbox above the messages, then clickSelect all [#] conversations .
• If you ran a search for emails, clickSelect all conversations that match this search instead.
• This works for the Inbox, All Mail, and other labels. You can then delete, label, and archive emails in bulk.

This article explains how to select every Gmail email at once from the desktop website. Doing so lets you apply a new label to the selected messages, bulk-delete emails,mark them as read , and more.

How to Select All Emails in Gmail

Once you find the emails you want to manage, highlighting all of them is a simple, two-step process.

1. Click the label that has the emails you want to select. For example, to select every email in your Gmail Inbox, clickInbox .
2. Right below the search bar and above your emails, click thecheckbox to select all the messages that are currently displayed. Or, select thearrow next to this checkbox to choose the types of emails to be selected, such as Read, Unread, Starred, or Unstarred.
   
   At this point, you have only selected the messages that are visible on the screen.

3. To select every email in Gmail, including those that are not currently displayed, look at the top of your email list for an additional button, and select it. It look like this:Select all [#] conversations in [label] .
   

How to Select All Gmail Emails From a Search

Gmail provides some powerfulsearch tools to help you find emails quickly . For example, you can locate your biggest emails, look for messages that have attachments, or find emails that arrived on a specific date.

When you use advanced search options, you can select everything that came up in that search. It works nearly the same as the directions we covered above but with a single difference…

1. Run the search to find the messages you’re looking for.
2. Click thecheckbox above the search results to select all the messages.
3. ClickSelect all conversations that match this search .
   

What You Can Do With Selected Emails

Anything you can do with a single email, Gmail lets you do with a selection of messages. Here are some actions you can take when you select lots of emails at once:

• Delete : To remove the selected emails, click the trashcan icon.
• Archive : This icon appears as a box with a small arrow in it. Archiving emails removes those messages from view in your Inbox without deleting them, which is great for tidying up. Once archived, an email will not appear in your inbox, but it can be found through a search or by viewing the All Mail folder.
• Report spam : This button uses a stop sign with an exclamation point in its center. Selecting it moves emails to yourSpam folder, and future emails from these senders bypass your Inbox and go to your Spam folder automatically.
• Move to : This button has a folder icon on it, and it allows you to move your selected emails into a folder or label.
• Labels : This button has an image of a tag on it. It allows you toassign labels to selected emails .

TheMore button (the three dots) offers several other options for your selected emails. These include:

• Mark as read
• Mark as unread
• Mark as important
• Mark as not important
• Add star
• Filter messages like these
• Mute
• Forward as attachment

The Gmail app also lets you select all the emails in the current view, but you can’t use the app to highlight_every single message_ . To bulk-select lots of messages at once, tap and hold to select one message, then chooseSelect all .

FAQ

• How do I delete all messages in Gmail?
  Toempty your Gmail inbox , enterin:inbox in the Gmail search field. Select thecheckbox at the top of the list of emails and then click Select all conversations that match this search . Press thetrashcan to move the emails to your Trash folder; they’ll be permanently deleted after 30 days.
• How do I find archived messages in Gmail?
  Toretrieve archived messages in Gmail , select All Mail on the left side of the website. Messages located in your Inbox will be labeled as such, and the same is true for other labeled emails.
• How do I recover deleted messages in Gmail?
  To recover your deleted Gmail messages, selectMore >Trash . If you find the email you’re looking for, right-click it and chooseMove to inbox . Note that emails sent to the Trash folder are permanently deleted after 30 days.

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