How to Delete All Unread Emails in Outlook

Even though many people consider Outlook to be a bit more old-school than other email clients, there are still millions that use it on a daily basis. This is especially true for businesses since Outlook offers a variety of features that help employees stay organized.

Whether you’re using Outlook for personal or professional reasons, there’s a high chance that you don’t read every email that comes your way. With time, you’ve likely accumulated hundreds and thousands of promotions, spam, and other unimportant emails.

Microsoft has designed Outlook in such a way that it’s very easy to use, so cleaning your folders of a ton of unread emails isn’t hard to do. There are a few ways to get rid of them, so let’s take a look at what they are.

Using the Search Function to Delete Unread Emails

The usefulness of the Search function in Outlook extends beyond just looking for specific emails. It can help you delete all emails in a specific folder that fall under the search category. Here’s how it works:

1. From the main Mail view, navigate to the folder where you want to remove all of your unread emails from. This can be any folder, not just your inbox.
2. Once you’ve entered the folder, press Ctrl + E to open up a new Search Tools.
3. You’ll see multiple search options, among which is the Unread, click on it to filter out all other emails. Another thing you can do is use the Scope function to further refine your search if needed.
4. Your email list will now contain only unread emails, so you can select all of them without worrying about affecting other categories of emails. To do this, highlight the first email on the list, then press Ctrl + Shift + End to mark all the emails.
5. Press Delete to remove all selected emails.

Using the Filter Feature to Delete Unread Emails

Another way to access all your unread emails is by using the Filter feature. It works similarly to the Search function. Here’s how to filter and delete all your unread emails:

1. From the Mail view, go to the folder that contains the offending emails, in this case, the unread emails.
2. Go to Home > Filter Email > Unread, all other emails will be filtered out, and you can use the Scope feature here as well.
3. Once you have your list of unread emails, select the first one and press Ctrl + Shift + End to select all the other ones, then hit the Delete key. All the emails that are encompassed in the filtering scope will be deleted.

Using the Search Folder Feature to Delete Unread Emails

The Search Folder feature is a very convenient way of gathering all unread emails in multiple folders into one place, where you can then delete them. Here’s how to use it:

1. From the main screen, go to the Folder Click on the New Search Folder button at the upper-left corner of the window.
2. A new dialog box will open with multiple search folder options to choose from. Click Unread mail to create a folder that will collect all your unread emails.
3. The navigation panel on the left now has a new Search Folders category, under which you can see the Unread Mail folder you’ve just created.
4. Open the folder and use one of the two following ways to select all your emails:
   1. Highlight any email on the list, then press Ctrl + A to select all of them.
   2. Highlight the first email, then use the Ctrl + Shift + End combo.
5. Press Delete to remove all unread emails.

This might be the most convenient option yet, seeing that you don’t have to enter each separate folder as required by the first two methods. Instead, the Search Folder will gather all your unread emails and you can delete them in a matter of seconds.

The Final Word

As you can see, Outlook comes with multiple native mass deletion options. There are also some 3^rd party solutions, but there’s really no use for them when it comes to deleting emails in bulk. That said, they do offer a variety of other options for managing emails, so if you need such a solution, you can find the best rated ones online.

When it comes to getting rid of your unread emails, the features offered in Outlook are more than capable enough. Don’t you think?

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