PC Doctor December 13, 2021

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Dear PC Doctor:

I have a MacBookAir 2020 and I use Apple email. I have thousands of personal emails and my first question is, "Should I even worry about this?" Or should I be cleaning up my email folder and deleting them regularly? Is there an optimum number? How can I delete them quickly? Thank you!

Signed, C

Dear C:

How much email to keep is largely a matter of preference – Do you want or need your old messages? Are you able to find the messages you want to see? Do you like to get rid of things once you’re done with them, or do you like having a personal archive?

If you do want to delete some unneeded messages, Mail has great features to help you do that. You can delete individual messages by selecting them and clicking on the little trash can image. If you want to delete all emails from a particular correspondent, you can put their name or email address in the search box and press return. Everything you’ve received from them will show up. Then, you can select those and delete them.

You could do a similar search for subjects or words contained in the message, etc. It’s really up to you what to save or toss.

If you don’t want to delete messages, but want them out of sight, you can create titled mailboxes (which look like little folders). Give each mailbox a name that is meaningful to you, and move messages into them. This way you have them for reference, but they don’t clog up your view in your inbox.

There are more features in Mail that you might find useful. Apple has a full users’ guide here: https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/welcome/mac

I hope this helps!
Until next time,
Happy computing!
PC Doctor

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