The step I take to clear my inbox every January

Before I took back control, I had 409 unread emails. But I have a trick to starting each year with a clean slate. You can do it, too!

Clear out your inbox

What's email archiving, you ask? Picture this: A digital vault where every email you've ever sent or received is safely stored, complete with attachments. No more scrolling endlessly through a jam-packed inbox!

So, are you ready to beat the email bloat? Here's your quickstart guide to mastering your inbox with the power of archiving.

Steps to archive emails in Gmail

Gmail will take some time to process your request, so be patient. You may have to do this step a few times to get everything.

Once you've archived a message, you can hit All Mail to the left, under "Inbox" and your other email folders, to find it. Search by a term you know was in the email or by the sender.

Using Apple Mail? Here's what to do

How to archive emails in Microsoft Outlook

Outlook doesn't put archived messages into a separate folder. Instead, they'll go straight to a data file you can access whenever you want.

You'll see emails disappear from your inbox and subfolders. Find them again under the "Archives" heading.

Got a Yahoo email? Here's what to do

Want to take a message out of the archive? Open the "Archive" folder, tap on the email you want and select Restore to Inbox.

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