How To Clean Yahoo Mail

You can delete all of your emails on Yahoo Mail by using the "Select All" tool repeatedly.
The "Select All" tool only selects messages displayed on the screen, so you may need to use it more than once.
Alternatively, the "Clean your Inbox" tool works more efficiently and preserves messages in an archive in case you need them again.
Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

If you've had a Yahoo Mail account for a while, you may have an enormous number of email messages in your inbox. Luckily, in the name of decluttering, Yahoo gives you a few tools for deleting all your messages at once.

You have two options for cleaning up your inbox: You can delete all your emails outright, which has a few disadvantages, or you can archive your messages. Archiving emails removes them from the inbox, but preserves them in case you ever need to get to them again in the future.

How to delete all of your email on Yahoo Mail

You can permanently delete all your messages, but the disadvantage is exactly that. If you ever need to reference a message in the future, it's gone and can't be recovered. In addition, this feature is time-consuming, since it doesn't always allow you to truly select all the messages at once.

1. Open Yahoo Mail in a web browser.

2. Click the checkbox at the top of the browser, above the inbox. If you see the drop-down menu, click "All." Otherwise, it should select all automatically. Note that this only selects the messages displayed on your screen.

If you'd like to keep any important emails, be sure to uncheck the boxes next to them.

3. To select more messages, scroll down to see all the messages in the inbox.

4. Click the checkbox arrow again to click "All." You should now see that all the messages are selected.

5. Click "Delete" and confirm this is what you want to do.

6. If that still doesn't delete all the messages in your inbox, repeat the process until they're all removed.

How to archive all of your email on Yahoo Mail

If you want to clean up your inbox but don't necessarily need to permanently delete them, archive your messages instead. Yahoo provides a one-click tool for doing this, which is generally more efficient than deleting, since you don't need to scroll, select, and delete more than once.

1. Open Yahoo Mail in a web browser.

2. Hover the mouse over "Inbox" in the navigation pane on the left and click the drop-down arrow.

3. Choose "Clean your Inbox."

Choose "Clean your Inbox" to move all messages to the Archive folder.

4. In the pop-up window, click "Archive emails." Depending upon how many messages you have, this might take a while, but when it's done, your inbox will be empty and all the email will be moved to the Archive folder.

Click "Archive emails" to confirm you want to empty your inbox.

Related coverage from Tech Reference:

How to block spam emails on Yahoo by blocking specific email addresses
How to send an email on Yahoo from your computer or mobile device using the free Yahoo Mail service
How to forward email from a Yahoo Mail account to Gmail or other email services
How to add Yahoo Mail to your iPhone in 2 ways and coordinate all of your email in one place
How to sign out of your Yahoo Mail account on desktop or mobile, and keep your account secure

Dave Johnson

Freelance Writer

Dave Johnson is a technology journalist who writes about consumer tech and how the industry is transforming the speculative world of science fiction into modern-day real life. Dave grew up in New Jersey before entering the Air Force to operate satellites, teach space operations, and do space launch planning. He then spent eight years as a content lead on the Windows team at Microsoft. As a photographer, Dave has photographed wolves in their natural environment; he's also a scuba instructor and co-host of several podcasts. Dave is the author of more than two dozen books and has contributed to many sites and publications including CNET, Forbes, PC World, How To Geek, and Insider.