The new year is a natural moment to clean house, and for many people that includes the often-neglected email inbox. Technology writer Kelvin Chan, in an Associated Press “One Tech Tip” column, outlines practical steps to purge digital clutter, which he says can reduce the risk of data breaches and improve focus.
A cluttered inbox can harbor sensitive information — credit card statements, bills and personal correspondence — that could be exposed if a hacker gains access, Chan notes. Clearing out old messages also makes it easier to locate important emails without sifting through hundreds of irrelevant ones.
Start with large attachments
Chan’s first tip is to sort emails by size to identify and delete messages with bulky attachments, such as high‑resolution photos or lengthy PDFs. In Microsoft Outlook, users can click the “Size” column to float the largest messages to the top. Gmail users can go to the search settings and filter for messages greater than a certain size — 20 megabytes is a good starting point, Chan advises. If a user wants to keep the text of a message, the attachment itself can be removed by right-clicking it in Outlook.
Group and delete by sender
Newsletters, mailing‑list traffic and automated bank security notifications often pile up quickly. “It’s often too tedious to delete them individually,” Chan writes, so he recommends filtering the inbox by sender to remove them as a group. In Outlook, users click the “From” column; in Gmail or Yahoo Mail, they can search for the sender’s email address. Combining this with a date‑range filter helps target old, obsolete messages. Chan suggests capturing, for example, all emails from 2010 to 2017 to mass‑delete utility bills and similar correspondence.
Use keywords to find newsletters
Because mailing‑list emails almost always include an “unsubscribe” link, Chan recommends searching for that word to pull up all newsletters at once. The term rarely appears in personal correspondence, so it is a reliable filter for mass‑produced messages that can be deleted in a single sweep.
Filter CC’d messages
Many people are copied on workplace email chains that are not directly relevant to them. Chan suggests creating a rule in Outlook that identifies emails where the user’s name appears only in the CC field. Under the Home tab, users can click “Rules,” create a rule, go to Advanced Options, tick “where my name is in the cc box,” and then choose to move those messages to a folder or delete them outright. Gmail users can achieve the same effect by typing cc: followed by their email address in the search bar.
The nuclear option
If the backlog remains overwhelming even after trying the other methods, Chan says the ultimate solution is to delete everything. “The benefit of this approach is that it really does provide you with a blank slate,” he writes. The obvious drawback is that important or irreplaceable messages may be lost, so he advises users to review their inboxes carefully — or accept the risk — before taking the nuclear step.