I have thousands of emails, etc., in my Gmail account. Apparently, once you delete an email, then even separate copies of that individual email, seemingly stored in a separate designated Gmail folder, are deleted at the same time, such that only one copy of the email actually exists in Gmail, regardless of how many Gmail folders copies are in.
My question – If my understanding is correct, then in Gmail, how do you clean out hundreds of unwanted emails, while keeping the ones you want to save, like those seemingly in separate, designated folders?
After years of not culling the emails, I have too many emails to keep up with, but would like to keep my personal correspondence from years past.
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Tusten Pope
That's because Gmail doesn't use "Folders." It uses "Labels."
Gmail labels are tags you assign to emails to categorize and organize them. Unlike traditional folders, multiple labels can be applied to a single email, allowing it to appear in various categories simultaneously. Kinda like tags.
You apply one or more labels to a message. What you see when you view Gmail in any other email app, including Mail, is each label shown as a folder. But they are labels, not folders.
So if you want to delete an email, delete it. You won't have it anymore. If you want to save an email, don't delete it.
If the problem is that in the Mac Mail app you have put the message in a folder other than your Archive folder, thus giving it that label, then just select the email and choose Message, Archive. This should remove the label for that folder and it will only exist without labels, so in your "All Mail" view on the Gmail website, and in the "Archive" folder in Mac Mail. The Mac Mail "Archive" folder is the equivalent to "All Mail" when looking at the Gmail web site.
You can also use the Gmail web site and when viewing a message see the labels applied to it at the top, and click an X next to each label to remove it. A message with no labels won't be visible anywhere but All Mail/Archive.
Thanks for your prompt response.
In view of the limitations in working with Gmail, as you described, the best alternative for me is to set up a separate account for personal or business emails I wish to keep, and email those selected emails from the original Gmail account to the new one.
Tusten: Why? That seems like a ton of work and complicated. Just delete the emails you don't want, put the emails you do want into a folder (AKA "apply a label"). Why complicate it with a second account and moving things around?