How to Clean Up Your Gmail Inbox

Clean Up Your Gmail Inbox

Gmail search filters

Gmail doesn't have the option to sort files - you can't get the inbox to display mails alphabetically, or according to the date received, or size.

1. Sign in to Gmail > go to the big search bar at the top.

2. First, let's clear out the emails taking up the most space. Type Larger:10M in the search bar > hit enter or click the magnifying glass icon.

3. This will find emails taking up more than 10MB. Now select the mails you don't want > delete (trash can icon).

4. You can experiment with different file sizes, depending on how much you need to delete.

5. The obvious next step is to clear out emails from the long ago. You can use Before:YYYY/MM/DD to specify a cutoff date, or older_than:years if you want to search for mails that are one, two or more years old. For example, if you want mails that are older than one year, you can type older_than:1y > press enter to see the list, and then select mails > delete to make space.

6. You can use combinations of commands, so if, for example, you want to delete old mails with attachments that are more than 1MB in size, then type the following into search: has:attachment larger:1M older_than:1y > press enter, then see the list, and select items > delete mails.

7. In case you're starting to worry about remembering all these operators, then you will be happy to know that Google has you covered. Click on the downward pointing arrow at the right corner of the search bar, and you will see the advanced search, which lets you apply all these filters in a simple menu.

Mailstrom

If you're willing to use a paid service, then we really liked Mailstrom. 

Follow these steps:

1. Open the Mailstrom website > enter your Gmail address in the form > click Start Free Trial > click Authorize With Google > enter email and password > Sign in.

2. Now you will see your inbox through Mailstrom. It will take some time to sort all your emails. Once done, you will see all emails grouped by sender. We found surprisingly large numbers of emails from people we hadn't spoken to in years. We started by deleting these.

3. You can quickly clear emails using the left sidebar, which lets you view emails by size, time, emails from social networks and has a handy Unsubscribe link to help clear the clutter.