How To Delete All Unread Emails In Yahoo Mail

Evan Gower June 20, 2020

Over 26 billion emails are sent on Yahoo each day. If you’ve been using Yahoo Mail for a long time, chances are, you’ve gathered a ton of emails that you have no intention of reading.

Luckily, Yahoo is aware of users’ desire to keep their inbox tidy. Yahoo Mail offers a very convenient way of removing all unread emails, and the whole process can be done in no more than a couple of minutes.

Deleting Unread Emails in the Current Yahoo Version

Over time, there have been a lot of changes to the overall design and functionality of Yahoo Mail. As new and useful features keep getting added, using the email service gets more and more simple. The same goes for deleting all your emails.

For this process, there isn’t a lot of distinction between the different versions. The biggest variation is in the way you access your unread emails and filter out all the other ones.

Here’s how this process works in the current version of Yahoo:

From the main page, navigate to the Smart Views drop-down menu on the left side of the window.
Open Smart Views, then go to Unread. This will filter out all read messages and gather the unread ones from all folders.
Click on the Select All checkbox (the one above all the individual ones) to mark all the emails.
Click the Delete button with the trash can icon to delete all emails.

This will move all your unread emails to the Trash folder. To get rid of them permanently, go to Trash and select All Emails and delete them from there.

Deleting Unread Emails in Yahoo Basic

Yahoo Basic is a slightly older version that isn’t that popular today. Still, many people prefer not to switch to the new one since they’re familiar with how Yahoo Basic works. If you’re one of them, the Smart Views option isn’t available so you’ll have to find another way to filter your unread emails.

Thankfully, this method is as simple as the previous one. Here’s how it works:

Navigate to the Search bar at the top of the screen.
Type is:unread in the Search bar, then click Search Mail (or hit Enter).
Once all but the unread emails have been filtered out, click Select All above the email list and then click the Delete

The same method works for the mobile version of Yahoo Mail, so you can use your smartphone browser or an app to do this as well.

Deleting Unread Emails in Yahoo Classic

If you’re partial to the interface of Yahoo Classic, we’ve got you covered as well.

Finding and deleting all your unread messages might not be as convenient as the previous two, but this can be done without too much effort. Here’s how:

Click on the Search Mail button at the top and go to Advanced Search.
When asked about the search criterion, specify To, Cc, Bcc: contains.
Type “.” in the entry field following contains.
Under Options, select Search > Only Unread Messages.
Under Look in folders, select all the folders where you want to remove the emails.
Click Search.
Select all emails the same way as with the previous method, then press Delete.

This does take a bit more work than the first two methods, but it’s as good as you’re going to get in Yahoo Classic. As always, this doesn’t remove the emails permanently, so you’ll have to go to the Trash folder and empty it to get rid of the emails for good.

The Final Word

No matter which version of Outlook you’re using, there’s an easy way of removing all unread emails. With each new update, Yahoo has made this increasingly easier, so you might want to switch to the newest version if you haven’t already.

The deletion process varies according to your version of Yahoo, the number of emails you’re deleting, as well as your network and computer speed.

Yahoo keeps adding new features that make using the email service more convenient. If you want to stay up to date with all of them, make sure to check out our posts for new tutorials. And if there’s anything specific that you would like to know or discuss, don’t forget to make use of the comments section below.