Although there are many alternatives, Google's Gmail is by far the most ubiquitous email provider around, and for a good reason. It features solid automation, filters, and tools for users to take advantage of. Email inboxes tend to fill up with junk, and while there are steps you can take to filter, sort, and clear out inbox items, sometimes the process requires a manual touch. Sometimes, the manual touch is to delete everything in sight, or at least archive it so that it's out of the way.
How to select all in Gmail in a desktop browser
To clear out your email or do bulk management, you need to use Gmail's select all feature, which you can do in a desktop browser as follows:
- Open Gmail and log in using your Google credentials if necessary.
- When you're in the Gmail inbox, make sure you're in the correct view and displaying all the content you want to see. You can select the mailbox or folder you want to work in from the sidebar, and you can collapse sections within each folder or inbox to exclude them from the selection.
- Above the email list, you will see All 50 conversations on this page are selected. (the number of emails may not be the same, it is not important), and next to it, the button Select all 79 conversations in Primary (you will have a different number of messages). Click this button.
In this way, you will highlight all the emails with the Inbox label, not just the first page. Instead of the Select all ... button, you will see All conversations in Primary are selected.
But if you want to select all incoming emails at all (not just from Inbox), then in the list of labels on the left, go to All Mail.
Next, do all the above items.
The All Mail label includes all incoming mail except those in the Spam and Trash folders.