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I want to clear my mail from my Gmail account, but don't feel like selecting every message (also the archived ones).

Is there an easy way to delete all my mail from Gmail without having to delete my account?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Go to your All mail view, and click "Select all" (or the drop down option All from the checkbox far left of Archive | Spam | Delete buttons).

Underneath the | Archive | Spam | Delete | + | - | Move to Inbox | Labels | More | buttons... You'll see a message appear in a yellow bar that says:

All 100 conversations on this page are selected. Select all 73795 conversations in All Mail

Click on the "Select all conversations" link on the right side of the message, then click delete.

The actual deletion process may take a very, very long time, during which you will be unable to use Gmail or log in (don't worry, it's still churning away in the background, even if it gives you an error!)

When it's done, all conversations (except spam) will be in the trash and you should see a message that says "You don't have any mail! Our servers are feeling unloved."

Now just empty the trash and delete all spam, and your account is now empty.

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  • Wonderful....thank you so much! What a pain to constantly push page by page
    – user15702
    Commented Dec 20, 2011 at 17:44
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    I have a feeling from his quoting "You don't have any mail! Our servers are feeling unloved" that @bdonlan deleted all of his own e-mail to provide you with this answer. Now that's dedication.
    – user13779
    Commented Feb 24, 2012 at 22:49
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    @Phong, apps for your domain makes getting test accounts easy :)
    – bdonlan
    Commented Feb 25, 2012 at 2:53
  • will this also free up space?
    – niico
    Commented Jun 2, 2017 at 13:09
  • How long is a long time? Over a week? I've been trying to delete ancient mails from a gmail account. I try to move them to the trash (26,000 "conversations") and they never show up. I try to empty the trash (12,000 "conversations") and they never go away,
    – lbutlr
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 21:35
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To delete all the messages including those in Spam

  1. In the Gmail search box type in:anywhere then enter or click on the Search button.
  2. Select all messages.
  3. Send them to the Trash.
  4. To delete all messages in Trash at once, click the Empty Trash now link directly above the messages.

NOTE:

If you have thousands of emails it could take a while to completely disappear from the Gmail web UI. It might a good idea to take not of how many emails there are before deleting them then check once a day that this number is becoming smaller until all the emails are gone. If they don't go, submit your feedback directly to Google (click the gear button > Help > Send feedback and post a question on the official Gmail help forum.

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