How do I mark thousands of emails as read at one time?

March 5, 2014 10:35 AM

I synced my Yahoo mail account with Gmail. Now Gmail displays thousands of unread messages. Most of them are useless notification messages but some may be emails that I want to keep. How can I mark them all as read? I would prefer not to go through the whole list 20 at a time.
posted by kittensofthenight to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: Go to search bar and type in "is:unread". Hit enter. When the results come up there will be 20 as you pointed out in the results page. Click the box to check all on that page. THEN, right above the first message, in the middle of the window will be an option to mark all that fit the search criteria. Click on that. Then click on mark as read. A dialogue box will ask if you are sure. Sure you're sure. Say yes. Viola.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:41 AM on March 5, 2014 [12 favorites]

Best answer: Another option would be to create a filter for the unread conversations that meet certain criteria, select the "Apply this filter to existing conversations" option, and implement the filter. Then you can delete the filter so it doesn't automatically mark future similar emails as already-read.
posted by Doofus Magoo at 10:46 AM on March 5, 2014 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks so much!
posted by kittensofthenight at 10:47 AM on March 5, 2014