How to bulk delete unread emails

[gowerboy]

gowerboy last edited by

I am using Opera Mail on a laptop with Windows10.
I want to get rid of unread emails - I have over 8,000 emails listed most of these are spam and from a while back when I wasn't deleting them, The same number is in the Received folder and the Unread folder. There does not seem to be any indication which are read and which are not.
Can someone please tell me how to get rid of them or archive the whole lot from, say, 1st Jan 2020 back

[sgunhouse]

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer @gowerboy last edited by

@gowerboy I've usually just scrolled to the first one I wanted to delete, selected to the end, and then deleted them (Shift-Delete on the keyboard). If there is some way to identify just the ones you want to remove (old mailing list messages, for example) that's even better, of course.

[gowerboy]

gowerboy @sgunhouse last edited by

@sgunhouse The poroblem with doing that is that you delete ones you want to keep. In Windows Mail you can show all unread emails and then delete as you wish without deleting the read ones. I can't see in Opera Mail that it even indicates if an email is read or not

[leocg]

leocg Moderator Volunteer @gowerboy last edited by

@gowerboy Doesn't Opera Mail has a Unread view? I think it's possible to show only unread messages, I just don't remember how.

[burnout426]

burnout426 Volunteer @leocg last edited by

@leocg Yeah, by default, the "All Messages/Unread" view only shows unread messages. You have to click the "settings for this view" icon on the message list toolbar and check "show read" for read messages to show in "All Messages/Unread". So, for the OP, they need to make sure "show read" is unchecked for "All Messages/Unread".

[gowerboy]

gowerboy @burnout426 last edited by

@burnout426 I'm getting more in a knot now. I had the same emails in Unread and Received and they were in bold. I have just right clicked on Received and clicked Mark All as Read and they all turned to light and the whole of the Unread folder has disappeared How can I get it back but showing just Unread?
That will not get me where I want to be

[burnout426]

burnout426 Volunteer @gowerboy last edited by

@gowerboy You might be able to hit ctrl + z to undo the operation, but don't remember for sure.

[gowerboy]

gowerboy @burnout426 last edited by

@burnout426 That just send the deleted emails from the rash folder back into both Unread and Received

[gowerboy]

gowerboy @burnout426 last edited by

@burnout426 I also appear to have lost the email trail

[burnout426]

burnout426 Volunteer @gowerboy last edited by

@gowerboy ctrl+y might be able to redo those deletes.

[gowerboy]

gowerboy @burnout426 last edited by

@burnout426 That's certainly got some of them back. Possibly the Read ones but I need to check. Fingers crossed. Thanks

[sgunhouse]

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer @gowerboy last edited by

@gowerboy The one problem you have is not knowing that messages in Unread are not marked as read automatically when you look at them. (They would be if you were using a different view.) The technical reason is that if you mark a message as read it is no longer listed as Unread and hence would disappear (and another take its place in the message pane) before you could tell what it said. Message titles in blue are those you haven't seen, titles in bold are "unread", and those not in bold are marked as read

There are keyboard shortcuts and of course a toolbar button to mark a message as read, if you don't use those (or just read your messages in something other than Unread) they stay unread.