How to manage email conversations in gmail.

To begin, you should first know the different ways you can select conversations in Gmail. You can select them one by one by checking their check boxes…

We are currently viewing the Inbox, so clicking the All or None links in the selector drop down menu will select or deselect all conversations in the Inbox, respectively.

You can choose to only view all unread or all read conversations.

Starring a conversation allows you to keep track of those you feel to be more important.

Click the greyed out star next to a conversation to Star it.

With that done, we can now take advantage of the Starred and Unstarred selection options to select those conversations that have been starred or those that haven’t.

Now that you know how to select conversations, let’s see what we can do with them once they’ve been selected.

Click the More drop down button.

From here, we can mark the selected conversation as Unread, among other actions.

Now, let’s Archive all the Unstarred conversations. First we need to select them…

Then click the Archive icon.

When you archive conversations, they are no longer visible in the Inbox. They haven’t been deleted or moved to the Trash, and still show up everywhere else… just not in the Inbox.

That means our archived messages will always show up under All Mail.

Archived conversations can be moved back to the Inbox by selecting them….

…and clicking the Move to Inbox button.

Next, let’s select the same messages, but this time Delete them, thus moving them to the Trash.

Click the Trash icon to delete.

As this message inform us, if we move conversations from All Mail to the Trash, they will no longer be visible anywhere but the Trash. Any labels previously applied to the conversations will no longer work… unless they are moved back out of the Trash.

Click OK button to proceed.

Let’s find the conversations in the Trash.

In Trash, you’ll see a Delete forever button. With this, you can permanently delete specific messages by selecting them first… or you can click the Empty Trash now link to delete every message in the Trash.

Messages that have been in the Trash for 30 days will automatically be deleted.

Google recommends that you don’t move conversations to the Trash unless you’re absolutely sure you won’t want them in the future… and to instead use the Archive feature. With over 10 GB of storage available to every Gmail account, you have more than enough space to keep every single message ever sent or received by your account.

Now let’s move these conversations back to the Inbox. First, select each one…

Then click and drag the selected conversations over to Inbox.

You should see a message pop up underneath your cursor indicating how many conversations you’re dragging, in our case, three.

Now let go of the mouse button.

The conversations now reside in the Inbox. Go to Inbox now.

You should also know how to report a conversation as Spam.

Simply choose one in the list….

….then click the Spam icon.

Notice that Spam now has Three unread messages in it.

Spam functions similiarly to Trash. You have a Delete forever button, and a Delete all spam messages now link. Messages that have been in Spam for more than 30 days will automatically be deleted… just like messages in the Trash.

If you have incorrectly marked a message as spam, select it, then click the Not spam button.

The conversation has been unmarked as spam and moved back to the Inbox.

You should note that all of the management buttons we just went over, will function exactly the same way when viewing a conversation.

To demonstrate, let’s open a conversation.

All of the actions under the More drop down, will function with the conversation that is currently open.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to manage conversations in Gmail.