How to Delete All Emails to Achieve Inbox Zero

Delete All Emails to Tame Your Inbox

Every day, over 300 billion email messages are sent and received worldwide. Out of these, around 50 percent are spam. It’s no wonder then that so many inboxes are overflowing with unwanted messages, causing their users to wonder if it's possible to delete all emails at once. The good news is that it’s not only possible but also easy-at least if you equip yourself with the right tool for the job.

Of course, going nuclear on your inbox is not the only option you have. You can just as easily learn how to delete multiple emails to selectively clean only certain types of email messages, such as marketing promotions, newsletters, or social media notifications.

Regardless of which approach you choose, we highly recommend you clean up your inbox as soon as possible because it’s impossible to be productive when there are hundreds, let alone thousands, of unwanted messages distracting you from emails that really matter.

1. How to Delete All Emails on Gmail

Being the most popular email service in the world, Gmail is also the number one destination for spam messages. There are many Gmail users whose inboxes have accumulated so many unwanted messages that they’ve essentially become unusable.

If you’re in the same boat, then you should know that learning how to delete all emails on Gmail is quick and easy:

1. Log in to your Gmail account.
2. On the left side of your screen (if you are on desktop), select More.
3. Select All Mail category if you want to delete all your emails.
4. Click the checkbox on the top left of your screen directly below the Gmail logo. Select the category such as All, Read, or Unread.

1. Now click on the Trash icon to delete all selected emails.

While knowing how to delete all Gmail emails at once is a good start, you can also go a step or two further by learning how to delete all promotions in Gmail and how to unsubscribe from emails that you no longer wish to keep receiving-even if they don’t contain an unsubscribe link or don’t honor unsubscribe requests.

When you use a bulk email organization tool like Clean Email, it doesn’t matter how many messages you need to delete to achieve Inbox Zero, the state of your inbox when you have nothing in it that demands your attention, because the tool always does all the tedious, repetitive work for you.

Follow our guide on how to delete all unread emails in Gmail.

2. How to Delete All Emails on Yahoo

First launched in 1997, Yahoo Mail is one of the oldest email services in the world. Despite its age, it’s still used by over 200 million users, many of which have been using the same email address for more than one decade. These Yahoo Mail veterans are often desperate to know if there’s a way to delete all emails in one go because they crave a fresh start.

If you’re reading this article, then you already know that deleting all emails is possible, and you’re here to learn how to delete all emails on Yahoo. Here’s a quick summary of the process:

1. Log in to your Yahoo Mail account on web.
2. Choose the Inbox folder or any other folder which messages you want to be removed.
3. Click the checkbox at the top of your inbox and select all emails.
4. Double-check the messages to make sure you haven't selected anything important. Click Delete to get rid of the selected messages.

Alternatively, you can connect your Yahoo Mail account with a bulk email organizer like Clean Email (more about it at the end of this article) and use it to analyze your entire inbox with a few simple clicks. You can then tell Clean Email to delete all emails at once and use its powerful email organization features to stop new messages from cluttering up your inbox again.

3. How to Delete All Emails in Outlook

Outlook (the email service, not the email client) started in 1996 as Hotmail. Microsoft decided to relaunch it as Outlook.com in 2012, and it now has over 400 million users around the world. Even though Outlook is known for its overly sensitive spam filter, its users are certainly not immune to spam messages, and they deal with the same inbox overload issues as everyone else.

Have you decided that the time has come to delete all emails in Outlook to start your Inbox Zero journey on the right foot? If so, then you should know that you can delete all emails in Outlook with a few simple clicks:

1. Log in to your Outlook.com account.
2. Click the small checkmark above your emails to select all email messages at once or click the small icon next to each message you want to delete.
3. Click the Trash can icon located in the top toolbar to empty the selected folder.

In fact, you can just as easily delete multiple emails to selectively clean only unwanted messages and leave everything else behind. You can find more information on how to do this in our detailed how to delete multiple emails in Outlook guide, which explains the topic in much greater detail than we could possibly go into here.

4. How to Delete AOL Emails

The AOL mail service provider comes from the Web 1.0 era, when web pages were static and comment sections non-existent. Despite being around for such a long time, AOL Mail has managed to remain relevant to this day, and its users can enjoy features such as support for up to 25 MB email attachments, built-in spam and virus protection, and integrated spell checking.

All this is well and good, but what if you’ve been neglecting basic inbox maintenance, allowing unwanted emails to pile up in your inbox to such an extent that legitimate messages can no longer be easily found? In such a case, it might be the right time to delete all AOL emails to give you inbox a new life:

1. Log in to your AOL Mail account.
2. Mark the boxes of the unwanted messages that you’d like to delete.
3. Click the Delete (trash icon) button to clear the folder.

You can also go to the following page to learn how to delete AOL emails using a free bulk email organizer. Once your AOL inbox is clean, you want to take certain steps to keep it that way. A capable email organizing app can automate common inbox management tasks, such as labeling new messages, moving them into specific folders, or archiving them, just to give you a few examples.

5. Delete All Emails on iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch

iOS devices make it easy to read, write, and manage email messages on the go, but they can quickly become a major source of distraction, bombarding you with an endless barrage of notifications for messages you don’t really care about that much. What’s just as bad is that some unwanted messages are guaranteed to contain large attachments, which may take up valuable storage space on your device.

The solution? You need to learn how to delete all emails on iPhone and other iOS devices. Here’s a brief summary of how it works:

1. Open the Mail app.
2. Go to any folder with messages you want to delete, e.g. choose the All Mail folder.
3. Select the Edit button located at the top of the screen.
4. Click Select All at the top of the screen.
5. Tap and hold the Move button at the bottom and choose the Bin folder.

📌  Note: The actions mentioned above will send all of the selected messages to Bin without any additional confirmation step.

While you can certainly delete all emails using the Mail app, it would probably take you a lot of time to achieve Inbox Zero, depending on the size of your inbox. It’s much faster, smarter, and overall more efficient to use a bulk inbox cleaner and let it automatically scrub your inbox clean.

When it comes to maintaining a clean inbox, we recommend you take advantage of the fact that your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch is always with you, so open each new message as soon as it arrives and delete it if there’s no reason to keep it in your inbox.

Learn more about how to delete emails on iCloud.

6. How to Delete All Emails at Once on Android

Android devices, both smartphones and tablets, make it easy to process your emails regardless of where you are or how many email addresses you're using. There's just one big problem with emailing on Android: inbox overload. Unless you always diligently categorize all new email messages, you are almost guaranteed to, sooner or later, end up with a cluttered inbox that's extremely difficult to use. At that point, deleting all emails at once on Android may be the best course of action. Here's what you need to do if you use the Gmail app:

1. Open the Gmail app.
2. Navigate to the folder that contains the emails you want to get rid of.
3. Tap the icon to the left of any message you want to be deleted.
4. Tap other icons to select all other messages you want to remove.
5. Tap the Delete icon.

7. How to Delete All Emails on Mac

Are you used to reading and composing email messages using the Apple Mail app on your Mac? You’re not the only one. You also wouldn’t be the only Apple Mail user suffering from inbox overload and wondering how to delete all emails on Mac.

Fortunately, Apple Mail makes this very easy. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Launch the Apple Mail app by clicking on its dock icon.
2. If you have several mailboxes added to Apple Mail client, choose the mailbox which emails you want to delete.
3. Press command + A to select all messages.
4. Press the Trash can icon on the top bar to delete selected messages.

You can also learn how to delete multiple emails on Mac using Clean Email, our favorite bulk inbox cleaner. This app lets you instantly delete emails from any specific sender, and it comes with a ton of extra features to help you maintain your inbox in an organized state.

8. How to Delete Old Emails

When most users open a new message, they leave it in their inbox instead of categorizing it, moving it to the Archive folder, or deleting it. Over time, this habit can lead to major inbox clutter, so you should learn how to delete old emails in Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL, and other service providers.

As we describe in our comprehensive article on the subject (link in the previous paragraph), most email services let you filter emails by date, making it easy to select only old emails and nothing else. For example, you could choose to see only messages that have been sitting in your inbox for more than a year, which should be plenty of time for you to know that an email can be safely deleted.

9. How to Delete Emails from One Sender

All major service providers, including Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and AOL, let you filter emails by sender. This comes in handy when you want to delete all emails from one sender without deleting any other emails in the process.

Generally, all you have to do is enter the sender’s email address in the search box and click the Search button or hit Enter. Depending on the size of your inbox, it could take a while for search results to appear, so be patient.

From there, you simply need to select all found messages and click Delete. For more information and detailed step-by-step instructions for individual email services, we recommend you read our comprehensive article on how to delete all emails from one sender.

Use Third-Party Cleaning Apps and Services to Make It Even Better

Throughout this article, we’ve mentioned bulk third-party cleaning apps and services several times. There are many such apps and services to choose from, and they all aim to achieve the same goal: help you reach and maintain Inbox Zero.

How? By analyzing your inbox, categorizing your messages, and equipping you with many different tools to quickly and efficiently organize them. Of course, no two third-party cleaning apps and services are exactly the same, so you need to weigh your options and pick the one that can best meet your needs and requirements.