How To Find Unread Messages in Gmail

If you have had your gmail account for sometime, and you are not particularly fastidious about reading all your 'grey' emails (those emails which you do not have to read right away, like eCoupon announcements from Borders Books or Best Buy reward zone news, etc) then likely you have many unread emails.

Over time, these emails pile up and are buried amongst all of your read emails. Gmail provides a counter of how many unread emails you have by displaying it in parenthesis next to the "inbox" link. But how do you go about viewing just the unread emails?

It's actually pretty easy if you use gmail search syntax. The "unread" status of your unread email is treated like a gmail "label." So all you have to do is enter the correct search string with the "unread" attribute... SO to find and view just all of your unread emails only:

• In the search mail field (at the top left, between the Gmail logo and the "search mail" button) type: label:unread
• Click the [Search Mail] button

This will retrieve all of your unread messages from your inbox, archives and junk mail

You can also type (don't include the quotation marks): "is:unread"

Once you are viewing all of your unread messages retrieved together, you can easily deal with them as a batch.  I suggest checking the ones you want to keep, and using the actions at the top of the frame, marking them as "read."   Once you do this, they will dissapear from your screen, leaving you with the remaining list of unread messages.  To delete all of these messages all at once, select all of them by clicking select: all   and then press [delete] button.