How To Archive All Old Emails In Gmail And Reach Inbox Zero

What Is Archive?

In simple terms, an Archive is a vault of messages that is a part of your email but not included in your inbox.

Using Gmail as an example, your email is made up of Inbox, Sent Mail, Spam, Trash, and Archive.

• Inbox: Every new non-junk email enters here. You can keep an email here, you can also delete or archive it.
• Sent Mail: Every that you send to others would be saved here.
• Spam: Junk email automatically goes in here.
• Trash: Every email that you delete goes in here.
• Archive:  Every email that you want to remove from your inbox, but not delete, goes in here.

In other words, the mail inbox is a collection of important emails that you need to attend to, while the archive is but a collection of emails that you might need sometime later in the future. And this differentiation is going to help you master your Gmail inbox problems.

What Does Archiving Do (And Not Do)?

To fully understand the benefits of archiving your emails, you would be required to know what it exactly does, and how it affects your Gmail.

1. Archived emails aren’t automatically deleted: The Archive Box is like a vault. While trashed emails are deleted automatically after 30 days, archived emails will remain in your Gmail till you manually delete them.

2. Archived emails can be searched: Gmail has a very powerful search feature. When you search for anything, values from your archived emails are also a part of that. If you want to specifically remove them and only search your inbox, simply type “in:inbox” (without the quotes) before the search term.

3. Archived emails count as storage space: Deleted emails don’t count with your total Gmail storage space. But archived emails would continue to count as they are still a part of your Gmail.

4. Archived emails aren’t marked as read automatically: If you archive an email without opening it up, that archived email will remain unread until you open it.

5. Archived emails can be browsed: Gmail Does not have an “Archive” tab to browse the messages that you sent here. However, you can make use of the All Mail tab to see the emails from both your Inbox and Archive together. If you make use of Microsoft Outlook, then there’s an Archive tab ready to browse the vault with.

How to Archive a Message

You can archive a message on your Gmail’s desktop web application as well as on the Gmail application on both Android and iOS.

For Desktop: Click on the Archive button that is at the top of any message. Or choose the multiple messages and click on the Archive button. Or tap “E” to make use of the Gmail keyboard shortcut for Archive.

For iOS: Click on the Archive button in any message. Or just select the multiple messages in inbox and tap on the Archive button.

For Android:  Go to your Menu > Settings > General Settings > Gmail Default Action and select the Archive (instead of the normal Delete). Now, in your inbox view, swipe any message left or right to Archive it. Or choose several messages and tap on the Archive button.

How to Retrieve an Archived Message

Did you mistakenly archive a message? Don’t worry, it is very easy to bring it back into your inbox.

You can either search for the message with your Gmail’s search bar or go over to the All Mail and look for it by browsing. At the top, click on the Move to Inbox button to bring it back.