Cleaning out Mailboxes, Part 2

Based on user feedback from my first post on cleaning out mailboxes, I would like to pass along a few other ideas for clearing out space on your computer.

Removing Labels

When we moved to Microsoft's Exchange Online, any email that has two or more labels will be duplicated in the new mailbox so that one copy can go in each folder.  So, while removing multiple labels from your Gmail mailbox will not shrink its size now, doing so will prevent your new maillbox from greatly increasing in size.

One label that has become meaningless now is GW Archive.  This was a label that was set when we moved email from the old GroupWise system into Gmail years ago.  The GW Archive label indicated email messages that had been archived in GroupWise.  Most of those messages also had other labels associated with them to indicate where they should be filed.

To remove the GW Archive label from any email, open the GW Archive folder in your mailbox, use the check box to select all, then click on the link to select all conversations with that label.  Once selected,  you can click on the label icon and remove the check mark next to GW Archive.  This will strip the GW Archive label from all those emails, while leaving the messages themselves intact.  Of course, if you no longer want any of those very old messages, you could also opt to delete them, knowing that doing so will delete them from all labels under which they may be stored.

If you have other labels that you don't think you need any longer, you can use this same method to open other labels and strip that particular label from all emails.

Deleting Dictation

Many attorneys have been using outsourced dictation for many years.  Some of you have been saving all of the sent emails that you sent to the transcription companies, along with those large audio recording attachments.  This can be a great place to recover a large amount of mailbox space.

To find these, run the following search:

to:keystrokepro.com.

Once you find them, you can select all and delete.  If you are willing to delete the returned transcripts, you can search for from:keystrokepro.com.

Using the "to:" or "from:" ensures you only get messages to or from that address, not any email that references that name.

Of course, if you use a different transcription service, simply substitute keystrokepro.com with the other services name.

Conversation Mode

Be careful, if you have "conversation mode" turned on, these searches will show you all conversations where at least one email meets the search criteria.  If you delete all of these, it will delete the entire conversation.  That is probably ok, since it will simply be deleting forwarded recordings or transcripts.  Just be careful you know what you are deleting.

If you want to be sure you are deleting only the messages that fall into your search and not others in the same conversation,  you may want to turn off conversation mode temporarily.  To do that, click on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of your inbox, and select "Settings".  In Settings, you should see a toggle switch  to turn off conversation mode.

Empty Trash

Of course, once you are done with your deletions, be sure to empty your trash.  Otherwise all your deleted mail will remain in trash for 30 days and will still need to be migrated.  Just be sure you want to delete what you are deleting.  Once you empty trash, you can no longer recover those messages.