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I started using Gmail to read a high-traffic mailing list, and my inbox is swamped with these messages. I've successfully tagged all the messages with the same label ("Busy") and have a filter that will send future "Busy" messages straight to archive.

My inbox is still cluttered with hundreds of these things.

How can I select all the messages tagged "Busy" and archive them at one go?

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4 Answers 4

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On the left hand side, click the Busy tag (or any other if you wish; it may be in a drop down) to bring up all of the messages with the selected label. Then on the top left of the messages pane, there will be a checkbox with a dropdown. Click the dropdown and select the All option. Now, under the More or More Options dropdown (upper right), select Archive. And you're done.

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  • there seems to be no "Archive" in "More Options" any more..?
    – user15288
    Dec 2, 2011 at 10:08
  • @alex there is in mine. I haven't received the latest UI update yet though.
    – MBraedley
    Dec 2, 2011 at 11:46
  • It's missing for me too. VERY frustrating...
    – Dave Dopson
    Sep 5, 2012 at 20:27
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    For me it was missing because I had more messages then would fit on a single page. Under the tool bar there is a link asking if you would like to select all messages, since you might have more then the 100 that show per page. Once you select all of them, Archive will show in the more drop-down.
    – CodeMonkey
    Apr 21, 2014 at 15:24
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I had the same problem - 'archive' was gone. I think I know what happened: I had over 400 emails with a label marked 'Jobs'. When I select 'Jobs', the first 50 show on my screen. I previously selected 'All', but it apparently only select that first 50, and the archive option DID show up, but it looked like they were still there, so I tried it again. On the second try, 'archive' was gone.

To get it back, there's another step. Select 'all' once again, and notice that a link shows up saying something like "do you really want to mark all 427 conversations, or just the 50 on this page?" It's not very obvious, but you have to select that link.

Now the archive option shows up and seems to work. Oddly though, if I look at mail by selecting that label, they're still there. But, at least they're not in my Inbox, which is what I really wanted in the first place.

I guess I'm still trying to figure out the difference between 'archive' and 'delete'. I know I can still see both by selecting 'all email'.

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    "Archive" simply removes the special "Inbox" label. "Delete" adds the special "Trash" label; items labelled "Trash" are deleted after 30 days. For what it's worth, "Archive" should always be available under the "More" menu, so long as at least one of the checked messages has the "Inbox" label.
    – ale
    Dec 14, 2012 at 13:42
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Once you clicked checkbox with 'All' option, you would be notified like below

All 50 conversations on this page are selected. Select all 1,308 conversations in Jobs

The sentence(Select all ...) in the right is clickable so that makes you select all the messages in the 'Jobs' label, and you would be able to archive all of them at once.

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If you remove the label in the 'manage labels' window, the emails automatically go into "All mail' and they should not be cluttering up your inbox.

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