Can you delete your entire inbox on Gmail?

I now have a clean install and would like to get thing set-up to use IMAP.  I also use a Blackberry that I want to set-up to share data with Google Enterprise applications that I am using (e-mail, calendaring, docs, sites and mobile).  I figure to make this a realistic process, I don't want to deal with more than 17,000 e-mails.  I also don't want to lose them, and this is where Google's "Archive" rather than "Delete" is like magic.

For a little bit of background, I currently have 17,822 e-mail messages in my INBOX alone on my Google Enterprise mailbox (same interface and usage as Gmail - Enterprise just lets you use your own domain name for a large portion of available Google apps).

I am using 2408 MB (31%) of your 7548 MB of my total mailbox allowance.  Luckily I am the administrator so I can adjust my quota.  My users do NOT have anywhere near an allowance of 7458 MB.

Anyhow, for quite some time I was using MS Outlook in POP3 mode compared to IMAP, so all my rules, filtering, etc were set-up in outlook and not in Gmail.  I had selected to keep the messages even after they were "POP'ed" so they accumulated.


Anyhow, I am fiddling with it now and searching of different ways to do it.  Right now, the process of archiving manually would be to pull up 100 messages at a time, select "all" and press Archive.  There is no way that I have the time to do that almost 200 times.

Rather quickly I found these solutions on the Google support website - most of which are outdated, but I working right now to see if any one of them actually works and/or make variations that do work.  For your review, and hopefully helpful, I've quoted a part of the conversation below.

Once I figure it out and successfully archive all 17,822 messages, I will report back on my success and the process that I use.

From the Google Gmail Help Discussion:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=6c6f504fd0a220f6&hl=en

Help forum > Gmail > Managing Settings and Mail > Is there a way to bulk archive all the messages that are in my inbox?
Is there a way to bulk archive all the messages that are in my inbox?

TweesLevel 1
7/9/09
This question was asked before, but no one answered it fully. I have over 8,000 messages currently in my inbox and I really wish I had gone through and archived them all when I first started because I would like my inbox to be clean. It would take years to go page by page and archive each email. How can I do this in quickly and in bulk?
Thank you!

Updates:
Brighten - This didn't work. For some reason it only archived 42 messages, not all of
the 8342 I had selected.
7/10/09
Ah ok, I tried to save a few emails by un-selecting them, but when I stopped doing that your suggestion worked. Thanks! Johnstone your suggestion was very helpful as well.
7/10/09
Best answers
BrightenLevel 1
7/10/09
Best answer - Twees (Asker) Go to this answer
Select "All"
You will see all the mail is checked off. I have mine set to see 100 at a time but that isn't relavent. Click the "select all conversations" link above the "snippits"
It should send you a warning pop up to make sure you wanted to select all the conversations.
Click "ok" if you're sure that's what you want to do.
Select what you want to do with them... Archive or Delete or whatever.
Click on your choice.
Tada...
You can now start to collect new email on a squeaky clean slate.
13 of 15 people found this answer helpful.
Replies 1 - 5 of 5
Brighten
Level 1
7/10/09
Best answer - Twees (Asker)
Select "All"
You will see all the mail is checked off. I have mine set to see 100 at a time but that isn't relavent. Click the "select all conversations" link above the "snippits"
It should send you a warning pop up to make sure you wanted to select all the conversations.
Click "ok" if you're sure that's what you want to do.
Select what you want to do with them... Archive or Delete or whatever.
Click on your choice.
Tada...
You can now start to collect new email on a squeaky clean slate.
13 of 15 people found this answer helpful. Did you?

Brighten
Level 1
7/10/09
P.S. In case you don't want to get rid of ALL 8,000 messages. You can do a search for each individual party and archive or delete them in groups.
1 of 2 people found this answer helpful. Did you?

csjohnstone
Level 1
7/10/09
Setup a filter in your Settings section. In the "From box" type "(before:2007/12/31)" to filter all mail prior to 2008. Click Next Step. Then in the next step select "Skip Inbox" and give it some label.
It will look like this in the filter section
Matches: from:(before:2007/12/31)
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label "Older than 2007"
6 of 6 people found this answer helpful. Did you?

gkasp
Level 1
7/25/09
The steps Twees gives above work, but if you want to move already-received message into the Archive, you should also check the box labeled: "Also apply filter to 1000 conversations below."
2 of 2 people found this answer helpful. Did you?

gkasp
Level 1
7/25/09
Oops, I meant the steps csjohnstone shows. ANd I don't think you need the label. So the be complete:
Settings -> Filters -> Create new filter.
In the "From box" type something like "before:2009/06/31" (minus the quotation marks).
Click Next Step.
Check the box next to "Skip the Inbox (Archive it)".
Check the box labeled: "Also apply filter to 1000 conversations below."
Click Create filter.
You can keep the filter and occasionally update the date, the run it again.

8 of 8 people found this answer helpful. Did you?

Ok, now it's my turn to get to work and see if any of these solutions work.