MetaChat - Ask Mecha: Deleting entire contents of Gmail inbox?

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15 April 2006

Ask Mecha: Deleting entire contents of Gmail inbox? →[More:] I have a gmail account I don't use very often, and it currently has over 3000 news alerts in the inbox.

Is there a way to delete all of the messages at one time? Right now all I can do is select the 100 emails on each page and delete them. Very time consuming.

Thanks, y'all!

post by: mudpuppie at: 16:29 | 6 comments

i don't think so--it'd be too easy to make a mistake and delete everything, which most ppl wouldn't want.

posted by amberglow 15 April | 16:30

Damn!

I found some Perl scripts on the web that would do it, but I don't use Perl. (Do I? I don't use it consciously, at least.)

posted by mudpuppie 15 April | 16:33

There are perl ports to both OSX and Windows, so you could use perl.

posted by cmonkey 15 April | 16:40

Yes, there's a pretty easy way to do it. Set up Outlook Express or another local email client to download messages from your Gmail account via POP. In Gmail's preferences, enable POP access and set messages to be automatically deleted once retrieved via POP.

Voila.

posted by killdevil 15 April | 18:14

ummm, puppie, I hope this is not your mecha profile gmail inbox you want to erase! I sent you an email couple of days ago. Not important tho'. kill it baby!

posted by carmina 15 April | 20:50

Carmina, the email address in my profile is safe. It's another address I'm trying to purge.

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner -- I've been in the mountains. :)

posted by mudpuppie 15 April | 23:00

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