Last Updated on November 14, 2022 by Barbara Trapp
Unsubscribe, Then Mass Delete
While visiting my parents, my mother asked for help cleaning up her with inbox. She couldn’t find the landscaper’s bill, and since he was also her neighbor, she wanted to pay it promptly.
I opened up her email account, entered the neighbor’s name in the search field and found the bill quickly. Then I counted. My parents were receiving an average of 55 – 60 emails per day. Political campaigns, charities, store advertisements… it was way more than they could manage. So, I sat down and mindfully unsubscribed from and deleted over 60,000 emails in less than two hours. This cut those daily emails in half (it’s a process!). Here’s how to do it:
- Open your email program and choose a repeating email to unsubscribe from.
- Locate the search field in your email program, usually in the upper right corner.
- Type in the name of the email newsletter/business/association and press the Enter key. This should group all those emails together.
- Open the first email, scroll to the bottom and look for the ‘unsubscribe’ link. It may be a 3 pt font, but it’s there.
- Click that link. A browser window will open. There will either be an unsubscribe confirmation or a few more steps to complete.
- Go back to your email account and close the first email. If the rest of the emails are no longer grouped together, repeat steps 2 and 3.
- Click once to select (not open) the first email. Swipe down/scroll to the last email without clicking them.
- Hold down the SHIFT key and click the last email. All emails in that range should be selected. If you have trouble with this, click once to select (not open) the first email, hold down the SHIFT key, and tap the downward pointing arrow on your keyboard until all those emails are selected.
- Press the DELETE key. You’ve just mass-deleted emails.
- Repeat for any other groups of emails you wish to unsubscribe from and delete in mass.
Prevention is Key
- To keep emails from getting to you in the first place:
- When signing up for services online and before clicking a check box to ‘agree to terms,’ scroll up a bit to see what you are agreeing to. Chances are, there are several other prechecked boxes agreeing to newsletters, product news, or event offers from ‘partners.’ If you don’t want these, deselect those boxes.
- Want to donate but not be deluged with frequent donation requests online or in your physical mailbox? Giving Basket allows you to give incognito to multiple charities at once and still get a tax credit. For more ideas on reducing junk mail, see this post on Junk Mail: How to Stop it and Let it Go
- If you do subscribe to a newsletter, be sure to read the first few. If they are of no interest to you, unsubscribe and delete.
- Note: Unsubscribe and Mark as Spam are not the same. One quietly removes you from a list. It’s like saying, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.” The other is a spam complaint in the eyes of email service providers and ISPs (Internet Service Providers). In short, marking an email as spam can hurt a business. Think carefully about which you choose. Most true ‘spam’ emails end up in your ‘Spam’ or ‘Junk’ folder anyway.
In case you were wondering, I did check with my mother to see what she wanted to get rid of first! I showed her how to do it herself in the future, but this gave her a head start.
Overwhelmed? Call me at 904-500-SORT (7678) or message me here for your free consult. I’d love to help you Zen Your Den®!
Barbara Trapp, CAPM
Professional Organizer
Zen Your Den®
Professional Member, NAPO (National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals)
Residential Organizing Specialist, NAPO
Workplace Productivity Specialist, NAPO