I really hate Gmail right now. I have no messages in my inbox – that part is a good thing or COULD have been a good thing. Had it not been for the hundred or so messages that were in my inbox because I needed to address them, it would have been a good thing. These messages were really my “ToDo” system; I left messages in my inbox that I needed to do something with – look something up, download pictures, look at a scan, save it somewhere else, get back to someone with a more detailed answer, go to a website and make updates to information, etc.

I wasted hours and hours and hours trying to reduce my gmail on a grand scale so that it would stop bouncing messages for my “over capacity” mailbox. But you can move the whole folder (“All Mail”) or you can move it 100 messages at a time. I tried that for about the span of 600 messages and decided I would be into the next century before I finished that task. I tried deleting all mail by year from Gmail on my laptop mail. That (seemingly) worked but the next time I would open it, instead of 75,000 messages, it would be back up to 105,000 messages.

Finally, in frustration,  I just moved the whole [explicative deleted]  “All Mail” folder contents to the trash, where it will now be deleted after 30 days (or I could go in and delete it now). But what that meant was the messages that were in my inbox and hadn’t been moved to a folder or tagged, lost their “Inbox” designation – they weren’t downloaded locally, which meant that those messages still lived on the server. So, when I moved all 75,000 messages to the trash folder, gmail sucked them out of my inbox too and moved them to trash. Now I have NO way of knowing which ~150 messages I needed out of those 75,000.

My brother was even texting me (because my email was bouncing like a dropped tub of bouncy balls) on how to manage my gmail account — most of which I had done or tried already. I basically want to just turn off their “ever so helpful feature” that is the auto archive folder “All Mail” – I don’t want to keep “All Mail.” I manage my email in folders or I delete it. I don’t want stuff I deleted hanging around for years… taking up space, or worse, coming back like gum on the bottom of a shoe. Anyone have any suggestions on how to turn off “All Mail” auto archiving feature on gmail? If not, I may be forced to stop using gmail altogether.

I guess I will have to change my email habits to not keep things in my inbox that are really pending or a ToDo item.  I think that means I just need to start a whole new folder called TODO and move everything that is kept in my inbox for more than a day into that folder….

Well, the good news is I finally got to “Inbox to Zero” land which is a promised side benefit of “Getting Things Done.” But I’ve never quite been able to get it to ZERO every day. My inbox constantly hovers at a level of about 100 messages, even with the ruthless deletion and foldering of messages. Let’s see if I can’t keep it that way.