It’s
tempting to let old e-mail pile up, knowing that your Webmail service’s search
function can find anything and that you’ll never come close to exceeding your
vast storage quota. (At least I’m assuming that all applies to your Webmail
service; if it doesn’t, we need to talk.)
But then one day an innocent search for the term “wax”
will remind you of how many times Groupon or Living Social has sent you a
daily-deal offer for a Brazilian wax. (Sorry, Groupon; I’m pretty sure I
won’t look any better in a bathing suit no matter how many times I try that.)
Some e-mail just isn’t worth keeping around after you’ve read it that
first time to see if it’s worth acting on.
Fortunately, if you use Microsoft’s Outlook.com you’ve got
a great tool for dealing with that mass of old messages cluttering your inbox.
To get rid of all older messages from a given sender, click on one of them then
click or tap Sweep in
the header above it.
You’ll then get a menu offering you four options: delete
every message from this sender; delete them and block any new ones that might
arrive; keep the latest one and delete the rest; or delete everything older
than 10 days. That last one is the most useful in this case — as long as the
sender doesn’t change addresses, in which case the filter you just created will
stop working.
Gmail doesn’t offer the same automatic filtering of older
messages, but you can quickly find them
with the right search terms. Run a search for a particular sender,
than add older than: followed immediately by whatever d, m or y shorthand
(for days, months of years) you wish. For instance, From: Groupon
older_than:10d finds all Groupon e-mails older than 10 days, which you
can then delete en masse.
In Yahoo Mail, you can put together a similar search with an
onscreen menu. Click All at
the left of the search box at the top of the screen, then click Advanced search at the bottom.
Enter the sender or subject whose messages you don’t need. Then, in the date
field, click Any time and
select Custom Date from
the drop-down menu; enter a date in the second field only to find messages
older than that.
If you use any of these shortcuts to delete old e-mails
from Yahoo Tech, we won’t take it personally. Promise.