My Mailbox is Full. How do I Have an Empty Inbox Fast?

A full mailbox equals low email management productivity. Do you have an inbox flooded with emails that waste your time, and the important ones are lost amongst them? If that sounds like you, continue reading to learn how to achieve an empty inbox and how Clean Email can help keep it tidy and organised.

Why Your Inbox is Flooded

You may have a full inbox due to several reasons. The biggest one is you just haven’t organised your emails from the get-go and allowed your unread list to build up.

Having a crowded inbox will waste your time and stop you from getting important tasks done. It’s very easy to become distracted by useless emails.

Other reasons your mailbox is full can be down to email notifications and marketing newsletters. Check your social media accounts, or any other service you may have clicked to receive messages about new products, information, or promotional emails.

Achieving a clean, empty email inbox will reduce distractions, and give you a sense of accomplishment at the end of each day when you see that inbox zero!

How to Keep an Empty Inbox

Here’s a list of tips and tricks to declutter email inbox in any mail service provider.

1. The four types of email tasks

There are four types of email tasks that require your time. Once you understand each message has some sort of purpose, you can organise your time better, or even sort messages into folders according to their task:

  1. Something you need to complete for someone else.
  2. You need to decide about something.
  3. You need to filter something.
  4. You need to delete something.

2. Use the triage method

Read and immediately archive or reply to a message when you first open it or add it to a specific folder to reply to later. Move important emails to a follow-up folder.

This method helps you stay on top of your clean inbox.

3. Can you do it in less than five minutes?

Feeling stressed? If you can respond to a message within less than five minutes, act and do it right away. If not, archive or delete the email. Learn more about how to deal with email anxiety.

You can quickly respond to decision emails by clicking the auto-response. Choose Yes or No to reply fast!

4. Use an email management app

If you don’t want to manage your incoming emails manually, you can use an email manager app like these:

Clean up your inbox with Clean EmailClean up your inbox with Clean Email

5. Unsubscribe or block

Unsubscribe from any unwanted newsletters or mailing lists that provide no value to you, and you never read.

You can unsubscribe from each newsletter manually or use an email unsubscribe tool like Clean Email. It shows all your subscriptions in one place and can unsubscribe you from a bunch of newsletters in a few clicks.

Unsubscribe from emails with Clean EmailUnsubscribe from emails with Clean Email

If unsubscribing isn’t enough to stop emails from entering your inbox, be sure to block that sender. Clean Email can help you here as well.

Block emails with Clean EmailBlock emails with Clean Email

6. Mass delete emails

Select multiple emails at a time to mass delete anything you no longer need, or that’s irrelevant to you. This creates a clean mailbox and more storage space. To mass delete emails in Clean Email:

  1. Sign up to https://app.clean.email and connect your mail account.
  2. Choose the Inbox folder from the left side panel and choose a message you want to delete.
  3. Or you can choose a Smart View folder which is a bundle of similar emails like “Online shopping emails.”
  4. Smart Views in Clean EmailSmart Views in Clean Email
  5. Make sure the Select all checkbox is clicked to select all messages related to the group or a specific sender. Then click Trash.
  6. Delete emails with Clean EmailDelete emails with Clean Email
  7. Mark a checkbox ‘Selected and future similar emails’ to create an auto rule for sending new emails from the same sender to Trash automatically.
Delete emails with Clean Email automaticallyDelete emails with Clean Email automatically

How To Empty Gmail Inbox

You can empty your Gmail inbox in the web application by:

  1. Opening the inbox folder.
  2. Select ALL messages by pressing Ctrl + a on windows or pressing command + a on Mac.
  3. Mark a checkbox with a triangle on top action bar to select all.
  4. Choose to move all emails to archive or delete.

You can manually select certain messages by clicking the checkbox next to the unopened message.

Another way to empty Gmail inbox is:

  1. Type in:inbox in the search bar.
  2. Click the checkbox within the select column to highlight all emails.
    (If there are lots of emails, choose “select all conversations that match this search”.)
  3. Archive or delete selected mail by clicking the appropriate icon.

💡 Note: Before deleting all messages from Inbox or All mail folder, make sure it doesn’t contain anything important. Your deleted messages will be permanently removed from the Trash folder after 30 days. Instead, it is better to delete messages following specific parameters like ‘older than 3 years’, ‘larger than 10MB’, or promotional newsletters you no longer need.

How to Empty Yahoo Inbox

To delete all mail in Yahoo:

  1. Open Yahoo in the web browser.
  2. Click the checkbox at top of mailbox view (it only selects mail visible on screen).
  3. Scroll down to select more messages.
  4. Click the checkbox, all mail should be selected.
  5. Click Delete.

To archive emails:

  1. Open Yahoo in the web browser.
  2. Click the dropdown menu when hovering over the inbox.
  3. Click “clean your inbox”.
  4. Click archive in the popup window.

How to Empty Outlook Inbox

Outlook has a handy clean-up tool that allows you to choose how you tidy up your inbox.

  1. Open Outlook on the web.
  2. Click File → Tools → Mailbox Clean-up.
  3. Choose to view different aspects of your mailbox and take action.

How Clean Email Helps Keep a Tidy Inbox

As we have previously mentioned, Clean Email is a convenient email management software to assist you with keeping your inbox tidy and managing email overload.

With its Auto Clean feature, you can cut out any manual tedious email task by creating rules that will minimise your time spent managing your emails.

Automate email tasks with Clean EmailAutomate email tasks with Clean Email

You can then edit the rules within the Auto Clean view that you can find on the left side panel. You can pause or delete the rule when you no longer need it.

The Unsubscriber feature helps you remove any unwanted subscriptions or spam newsletters easily. You can always choose to read later any subscriptions that you don’t need in your inbox but don’t want to delete right away. If you change your mind, you can resubscribe within the Unsubscriber view.

Unsubscribe with Clean EmailUnsubscribe with Clean Email

Clean Email is a privacy-oriented solution, we never sell or share user data with any third parties. It is GDPR compliant and has passed a multi-step verification process introduced by Google.


Mailbox Is Full. How To Empty Inbox Fast? - FAQs

How do I empty my Gmail inbox all at once?

You can empty your Gmail all at once by selecting all emails and moving them to the trash or archive folder.

How do I empty my entire mailbox on Mac?

To empty your entire mailbox on Mac in Mail app, simply press the command + A keybord shortcut. This highlights all emails that you can then send to trash.

What happens if I don't empty my mailbox?

Your inbox will become overloaded with time, making it harder to manage and more difficult to find the messages you are looking for.

How can I clear my mailbox?

You can clear your mailbox by finding old or large emails and unnecessary promotional newsletters. You can then choose to archive or delete them. You may need to repeat this process a couple of times.

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