We started by creating a new one from Google and we use it for various things, over time it starts to fill up with legitimate messages and others. There comes a point where we will have to organize our email account , luckily finding and deleting old messages in Gmail is something very easy to achieve and totally necessary to stay organized..
Find and delete old emails in Gmail
At the top of Gmail, in the search box to find emails older than a year, we will have to enter the following: older_than:1y
In case we want to search for more years, we will have to change the "1" for another number. We can even search for months or days. The command would be the same, only the letter we used at the end would change. If we want to search by months we use the "m" and if we are going to do it by days, we use the "d".
For example, if we want to search for emails from two months ago we would write “older_than:2m” and if we wanted to search for emails from 6 days ago, we would write “older_than:6d”..
Find emails in labeled folders
If we use labels in Gmail, we will be able to see the folders for those labels in the left sidebar. So, if we want to find and remove old emails in these tags to “clean up” one or two, we can use different search expressions.
If we select a folder, we can see that an expression automatically appears in the search bar. For example, if we choose the "Personal" folder in the search bar, "label:personal" will appear..
So, if we want to search within that folder, we are simply going to add “older_than:6m” and it would look like this: “label:personal older_than:6m” which means that we are looking for emails from 6 months ago in the specific folder.
use more filters
The positive thing about using search expressions is that we can also quickly see old emails using more specific filters.
After using the previous expressions, we will have several options available at the top, which are filters. The mentioned filters allow us to refine the search even more: Attachments, From, To and Not read.
All we have to do is choose one of these filters to limit the result. This is really great for finding only old emails that have attachments or from a specific person, for example.
How to delete the emails we have found
We already know how to search for emails, now it's time to delete them and this is very simple. When we are clear about which ones we want to eliminate, we are simply going to check the box that is on the left side of the toolbar at the top; This will mark all the emails we have available.
In case we prefer to limit the selection, we can use the arrow next to the check box and we can choose: Read, Unread, Featured or Not Featured.
Once we have everything selected, we are simply going to have to click on the trash can icon in the toolbar to delete them.
Something else we should keep in mind is that we will not be asked to confirm the action. If we see that we have deleted some by mistake, we will simply have to go to the left sidebar and choose the "Trash" folder and we will be able to recover them.