The Archive Button Does Not Work. Why?
When using the archive function, it is important to understand how archiving actually works in your mail app. The behavior is slightly different for Google email accounts versus all other types of email accounts:
- In Google accounts, the Inbox label is removed from the selected messages. The message has no labels but can still be viewed in All Mail or when searching in the email application.
- In other accounts, the messages are removed from the inbox folder and placed in another folder called Archive.
Sometimes users may be confused about archiving, expecting the messages to be moved out of their account or compressed, for example. But in fact, archived messages remain in your account; just not in your inbox.
Similarly to viewing All Mail in Gmail, Smart Folders in Clean Email show all messages in your account, including archived messages. So when you archive messages, that does not prevent Clean Email from showing them to you.
However, some Smart Folders (such as Top Senders or Older than 2 years) include an additional In inbox filter by default.
In Smart Folders that do use this filter, when you archive messages contained in the folder, you can expect the total number of messages in the folder to decrease. Archived messages will not appear since they are not in your inbox.
But for any Smart Folders that do not have the In Inbox filter applied, it is normal for archived messages to remain visible in the folder. Nor will the total number of messages go down when you archive messages, since Clean Email shows messages that exist anywhere in your account.
In any Smart Folder, you can remove the In Inbox filter by clicking the X, or apply that or other filters by clicking the Filters button just below the search box. For more information, please see our article Searching and Filtering.
If you want to ensure that the archive button is working correctly, make a note of one or messages that you are about to archive. Then, after you click the Archive button, check the Archive Smart Folder in the left-hand navigation menu. If you see the message(s) there, that means the button worked correctly.
If you want to get rid of the messages (not just remove them from your inbox), you can either click Trash to move them to the trash, or click the drop-down next to Trash and select Delete to permanently delete the messages instead of archiving them.
Another option is to consider moving the messages to the Read Later folder. For more information about this feature, please see our article Read Later.
Please contact us and we will be happy to help.
