Unofficial news and tips about Google

July 1, 2006

Delete All Spam In Gmail

Gmail has a great spam filter, but the spam is hard to delete. And that's a problem if you get hundreds of spam messages every day. Gmail is rolling out a new link called "Delete all spam messages now" so you don't have to repeatedly select all messages and delete them. If you don't see the link yet, you'll find there in the next days. You can see it in the screenshot above, that also shows the previous design.

Clicking on the link gives this message:

Don't forget that Gmail allows you to create an infinite number of bulk addresses like myemailaddress+walmart@gmail.com. You should use them when creating accounts for different services or forums. If you see spam coming to that address, set a filter that moves all that messages to Spam.

61 comments:

Can Gmail have "context sensitive (right click) drop down menu"? Deleting spam mails is not the only inconvenience that I can find, there are two more:- selecting all read emails but unstarred (or whatever combinations of read, unread, star, unstarred), and- moving emails to archive and at the same time marking it as read.

If counting the addition of "Report Spam" button and "Delete" button, I find 5 inconveniences to which Gmail can resolve by modifiying its web page design. Would it be beter to hide all these (or upcoming) buttons and links in "context sensitive (right click) drop down menu"?

Don't forget that Gmail allows you to create an infinite number of bulk addresses like myemailaddress+walmart@gmail.com.

i only see one feature similar to this: The Accounts part of Settings where i can validly send email as though it came from one of my other accounts (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.)... i'm not finding info on creating bulk addresses as you've described. It might be right in front of me, but some help would be appreciated.

If your Gmail address is joe@gmail.com, every mail sent to joe+sometext@gmail.com arrives to your inbox. So you can use this feature to create a filter that looks at the From address and decides to do something with the mail sent to joe+sometext@gmail.com (in the example I gave in my article, report as spam). You can consider this a way to separate some of your mail from the rest.

Thanks for the clarification. Didn't realize that was a feature. i'll have to put it to use. Just toss a "+" and something to trigger a filter....i think Yahoo offered something similar to their paid customers. i never did see any positive effect on my spam content using them.

I know this isn't the Google request line, but while they are at it I sure wish they would add an "Archive all mail in the inbox" link as well. I've given up archiving my mail because it is a hassle selecting all of the messages in my inbox (and yes, I know I should be dealing with them all as soon as I see them the first time)

The foo+bar@gmail.com thing is useful, but gets messed up by the unbelievable number of websites that don't allow you to include a '+' in an email address. Usually because idiot web designers use '+' as a special character to separate fields.

was waiting for someone to mention the caveat that a ton of WWW forms requiring emails disallow a + character and return some form of an "invalid email" error

And re: trashmail, I find that spamgourmet is better simply because it is designed to create new, disposable accounts on the fly instead of having to fill in a web form every time you need a new one. you setup an account at spamgourmet, say "anonymous@spamgourmet.com," then any time you want a disposable email you simply add a nickname for it and the # of emails you want allowed:

blogger.5.anonymous@spamgourmet.com

and input that into a WWW email field. it will be automatically created, forwarded to the email you have on file with spamgourmet and trashed after it forwards, in this case, 5 emails

Replying on the subject of "Archive all in inbox", think about it - you can only select all the email messages on the current screen. If you've got more than whatever displays, or say, a couple thousand messages, archiving all would take forever.

The easiest way to archive all the mail in your inbox, and even sort it too, is to do it as it comes in.

For example, a mailing list that comes from someone@mailinglist.com can have a label automatically added to it and archived when it comes in with a custom filter.

Or an easy way to have it all archived and never see anything in your inbox would be to set up a second gmail account and have all the mail forwarded from the first to the second...and set up a filter to archive it when it comes in, similar to the first filter I explained.

Additionally, all those gmail invites you have can be very useful and disposable. You can set up account of joe.walmart@gmail.com then forward all mail from that account to your main one. Then set an autolabel to make it more noticeable. If you see spam in it, you can disable the forwarding and/or close the account.

I've tried to make a bookmarklet that creates the links, but it doesn't work because the version with Delete All Spam uses a different code. Gmail's code is obfuscated, so it's pretty difficult to get something meaningful from it.

Google should release this for everyone, because the feedback was impressive.

It's hard for Google to admit they were wrong - Gmail was initially released with the idea "You don't have to delete mails". It took them almost two years to create a delete button for mails.

I must be dense, so I am sure someone here will explain to me WHY do you need this delete all SPAM feature? I hear "So I can check the SPAM folder for good emails." Well, what I do is everytime I check the SPAM folder, I select the current top page of emails and mark them as read. Then next time I want to check the SPAM folder, I first mark the first page of emails as read, then I just check down the list till I get to the next block of emails that I previously marked as read. Big deal?! Is there some OTHER reason to need this feature?

I wish Google would give us Gmailers the option to have marked messages added to the list of email filters, thus preventing them or anything from their domain from ever hitting our inbox/spam folders again.

i came here to find out how to reduce spam, but got more confused on what to do.So does anyone know how to change a current gmail address,i'v tried to figure it out but failed, this would get rid of spam would it not?

No, this only allows you to delete all the messages from the spam folder. Gmail does a pretty good job at filtering spam: you should just "Report as spam" the messages that weren't detected by Gmail instead of deleting them. This will improve Gmail's filtering algorithms.

I've held my tongue for three years thinking you guys would update and make it better over time but goodness sakes man your ui sucks. Lots of great features that are hard to find and lots of important common features that are 10 times harder to find than in any other mail service I use.

I've been trying to find out how to delete ALL spam in one go for ages! it's pointless trying to ask google,they don't give a toss. I am now forced to use my yahoo.co.uk email client as it has a delete ALL spam now feature which gets rid of it in seconds. Last week i spent 40 minutes meticulously checking each spam message in the spam folder deleting all the spam. i am totally p....d right off that Google cannot provide it's customers with a bulk delete button that most other email programs have. If the owners of Google cannot provide such a basic service to their customers they don't deserve us to stay and we should protest with our feet!

Hey a wipe if you are on a mobile network which the universe will all soon be on you would notice that the powers that be at Google have seriously flopped! They either have downgraded their services or made them even harder as opposed to easier to use. Especially their email services. I was a die hard Googler but since the advent of mobile disdain I am moving on, and I hope their profits go the same way.

Google, specifically Gmail, has gotten much better identifying my spam mail. I try to delete my spam folder daily so it doesn't get too long.. It is a time consuming process, but i have accepted it. Looking forward to a spam free future:)