How To Delete Sent Messages in Gmail

Dear Computer Lady,

Could you please instruct me as to how to delete sent messages? I have so many.

I would like to keep some for a record, could I do that?

Thanks so much, Darlene

Dear Darlene,

Since you didn’t mention what email program you were using, I almost deleted your email without answering it.

I noticed, however, that your email address was with Gmail, so I am going to take a guess that you are using Gmail’s online interface for your email.

To delete your sent messages in Gmail, click on “Sent Mail” in the left column. This will display the contents of your sent message folder.

If you want to get rid of them all, you can click on the small check box just above the list of messages. This selects all the messages on the current page.

As soon as you select all the messages on the page, a message will appear near the top of the list with a link for you to click if you want to select all the messages in your folder. (see image below) Click this link to select all your sent messages, then click the trash icon at the top of the window.

gmail_sent_messages

If you want to keep some of your sent messages, it is easy to go through the folder and delete only some of the messages.

If you are only keeping a few messages, click on the check box at the top of the page, to select all the messages on that page, then click the check box for each message you want to keep to un-select that particular message.

When you have the messages you want to delete selected, click the trash can icon at the top of the window.

Elizabeth

 

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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
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Comments (3)

  1. jerseyhiker

    July 31, 2013 at 5:38 pm

    the question is not about deleting sent mail or about conversations. gmail is very informative about that. the problem is that messages I do NOT want to delete, but merely label. However, even though the message is labelled, it will still stay in the sent mail box as well as the labelled box.

  2. jerseyhiker

    July 31, 2013 at 5:13 pm

    I think computer lady misunderstood the question as I have the same problem; specifically, I want to label certain messages in the “Sent Mail box”. However,once labelled, they still REMAIN in the sent mail box. I have hundreds of emails I would like to omit from my sent mail. Even though I labelled them they remain. thanks for any help.

  3. dustyrider

    February 8, 2013 at 3:28 am

    I think I’m correct in saying that if you delete a sent message in gmail, you also delete the entire conversation that that particular message relates to. In other words any replies or forwards deleted will delete the entire conversations.