mass email deletion

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My wife has an iPad Mini. Is there any way to mass delete emails in the mail program?

ken
 

Raz0rEdge

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If you only want to delete a bunch of emails then you click on Edit when viewing the emails and the selection circle should appear next to each email, now select the emails you want and then hit trash.

If you want to delete ALL email, then there is a trick (that's not very obvious). Click edit to get the selection circles, select the first email only. Now with one finger click AND hold the Move link on the bottom, with another finger unselect the first email and THEN let go of the finger that was holding the Move link. Depending on how many messages you have, this might be quick or very slow, just wait. Eventually you'll get to a screen that should indicate that ALL the emails were selected by the count and if you choose Trash from that screen, all the emails will be deleted.
 
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About the only way I can think of is to open Mail, then tap "Edit" upper right corner, and the list of emails will shift right slightly and a button appear. Tap the button on each email you want to delete and when done, there should be a "delete" option at the bottom of the screen.
 

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Don't get me wrong I love the macOS platform but I have never liked Mail. This is just another shortfall of the app. I gave up in disgust years ago and started using Airmail on my MBP. After a couple of months I started using it on my iOS devices as well. It does cost money, I forget now how much and it does have some faults but it tackles your wife's problem beautifully.
Each message has a sender icon on the left. A long press will display all messages from that sender. Then like Mail you can press on the left of one message and the edit menu appears. The difference is that you can select all. Click the top right menu bars and you have several options, one of which is delete. So in a couple of moves I can delete every email notification from say, Mac Forums. Or all unread, or all anything using Smart Selection.
There are other email clients whose primary purpose is to keep your inbox empty. Airmail is not one of them but it certainly makes many things easier or at least possible.


Sent from my iPhone
 
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Highlighting and deleting a page at a time won't work Jake, there are 10,000 emails, 95% of which are spam. I attempted what Ashwin suggested perhaps a year ago and don't remember exactly why that didn't work. If I recall, I believe after deleting perhaps 10% of them, the program uploaded them from G-mail again. Apparently I have to do the same thing with G-mail.

I wonder if it's possible to simply delete the iOS male program entirely along with ALL of the emails, and simply start from scratch. After all, the emails are still backed up on G-mail. Part of my problem is I have absolutely NO idea how iOS actually functions and if there is a way to prevent Mail from re-loading that entire archive.

Ultimately, Rod's solution is probably ideal, but that doesn't address the original issue. Mail has been reasonably reliable on my MBP.

EDIT: Also, her iPad is a minimum configuration and I have to think those emails are taking a great deal of drive space. Is there any way to check that? Not total drive space, but rather the size of the mail archive.

ken
 
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Raz0rEdge

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If this email is linked to GMail, you should be using IMAP to connect to it. Just go to the GMail website on your browser (ideally from desktop) and delete all the email there and it will be reflected on iOS. If you are using POP for some reason, then you are better of deleting the account from Mail and re-adding it as IMAP.
 

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To be truthful from the start, I've not tried Ashwin's suggested workaround (post #2), but I can say that with iOS devices, it depends very much on whether your email account is POP3 or IMAP.

If POP3, then what Jake posted (post #3) is the only, and very laborious way of doing things. (Unless using third party apps).

But if your account is IMAP, than when you tap on Edit, you can Select All, then Delete.

Then, however you've done the first delete, you have to go into the Deleted Box, Tap on Edit > Delete All (this part works for both POP and IMAP).


(I know this from bitter experience. When I'm away from home and open Mail on my iPad Pro, the POP account emails have to be initially deleted one by one; whereas my iCloud account which is IMAP allows Edit > Delete All. In both cases, I then have to Tap on the Deleted Box where Edit > Delete All works for both as stated above)

Ian
 
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Ian,

I assume that since there is access to the email from any computer with an internet connection, and they aren't deleted from the email server (in this case, Gmail), it's IMAP. I don't however use the cloud for anything, ever, at least not intentionally.

I guess that ultimately, my question was answered. On the mail program on my MBP, I just go to edit, select all, delete. BOOM, all gone. That function does not exist on the iPad. It's not ultimately THAT big a deal anyway. It was annoying that I couldn't figure it out. REALLY dumb though that a task so simple is so **** complicated. Very often iOS is so easy, I can't figure it out because I EXPECT it to be complicated. In this case, it actually IS complicated.

As always, thanks for the responses.

k
 
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Well, the iOS solutions are harder because it's not designed as a full computer, no matter what Apple (or Microsoft or Google or anybody) says. The OS is not as extensive or robust. *Could* Apple make it better? Sure, but that enhancement would add to the size of the OS on a device with limited and non-expandable memory and storage. So it's a compromise. You can read and write email on the iPad, iPhone (or tablet of your preferred manufacturer) but to truly manage email, you go to your Mac or PC and deal with it there.

Or your wife could just delete the email as it comes in, keeping the numbers saved small. That approach requires discipline, a trait all to many of us lack.
 
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Or your wife could just delete the email as it comes in, keeping the numbers saved small.

That horse has left the barn ;-)
 

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Well, the iOS solutions are harder because it's not designed as a full computer, no matter what Apple (or Microsoft or Google or anybody) says. The OS is not as extensive or robust. *Could* Apple make it better? Sure, but that enhancement would add to the size of the OS on a device with limited and non-expandable memory and storage. So it's a compromise. You can read and write email on the iPad, iPhone (or tablet of your preferred manufacturer) but to truly manage email, you go to your Mac or PC and deal with it there.

Or your wife could just delete the email as it comes in, keeping the numbers saved small. That approach requires discipline, a trait all to many of us lack.

I disagree, Airmail does it with a lot of other management options to boot and with the possibility of 256Gb of storage there's more than enough space to increase the size of one app.


Sent from my iPhone
 

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We shouldn't forget that some people use iPhones and iPads as stand alone devices. They may sync to iCloud or others but they do not always have a computer.


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I disagree, Airmail does it with a lot of other management options to boot and with the possibility of 256Gb of storage there's more than enough space to increase the size of one app.


Sent from my iPhone
Ah, but it never ends with ONE app, does it? Enlarge mail, enlarge Photos, enlarge the Desktop, enlarge x, y, z. Compromise is always necessary. The beauty of it all is that if it is important TO YOU, run Airmail. It's a choice. I choose not to because that feature isn't important to me.
 
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We shouldn't forget that some people use iPhones and iPads as stand alone devices. They may sync to iCloud or others but they do not always have a computer.
Sent from my iPhone

In my wife's case, her iPad is in fact a stand alone device. She only has a few gig left, and that was my concern. Most of that I assume is pictures, but I'm sure 10,000 emails is a close second.
 

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