Trashing your Gmail Messages

Gmail offers three ways to rid yourself of email you no longer want to keep around.  You can archive it, mark it as spam, or put it in the trash.  If you archive it, the message will remain in your mailbox forever, just not in the inbox or any of your other folders.  You can find it by looking in "all mail" or by searching for the message.

If you mark an item as spam, it goes into your spam folder.  This has the added benefit of alerting Google that you consider similar messages to be spam.  If you are getting ads that you don 't want to see in your inbox, it is best to mark them as spam rather than simply trash them.  That way, you will not be bothered with as much junk mail in your inbox going forward.

If you have a message that you no longer want or need for any reason, you can delete it by moving it to trash.  When a message goes into your trash, it will eventually be removed from your mailbox entirely.  If you search for an email that is in trash, you must specify that you want Google to search trash.  By default, email searches exclude anything in the spam or trash folders.

The benefit of the spam or trash folders is that you have time to realize that you really need something you had removed.  You can go into your trash folder and move any item back to the inbox. Similarly, you can go into your spam folder and mark an item as "not spam" thus moving it back to the inbox.

In truth, there is no real need to delete any messages anymore.  The firm pays for unlimited storage, meaning you can save as much as you like.  Saving extra email also has no impact on performance in Gmail.

Even so, there are some emails you are certain you never want to see again.  It is fine to put those in the trash.  Some people like to be tidy and regularly empty their trash as soon as they put messages in it.  I strongly recommend against this practice.  Google will automatically delete anything in trash or spam folders after 30 days.  That gives you time to realize you need something, but also ensures that the trash will not pile up in the account forever.  Once you remove an item from trash, it is virtually impossible to restore to your inbox.  It is much better to give yourself that 30 day window to recover anything, before it is gone forever.