Gmail: using the “All Mail” folder

Thank you for your response as well, but I believe that PC and Mac are the same, although people do talk about the "mail" application on Mac OSX. In the screenshot below, you can see that it is indeed "Gmail" that is taking up the space that is causing me problems, so this storage is not local; it is indeed in the cloud.

Hello and thank you for your response. Indeed, I use MAIL (Mac) and not Thunderbird. But your comment is guiding me, I think, towards a start of a solution or a lead. If I understood correctly, those pesky messages are hidden on Gmail (online) in the "All Mail" folder.

You can see in the screenshot below my mailbox settings on MAIL. I'm not sure how to configure this to avoid unnecessary backups of my emails in that folder.

In the end, I still find it ironic that there is this "backup" when we want to permanently delete messages that, on one hand, serve no purpose anymore, and on the other hand, are running servers for nothing and take up space in a free storage that quickly gets saturated to become a paid solution... anyway..

I might have an idea: migrate my inbox and the archive folders I created, to then purge the Gmail "All Mail" folder. And then re-migrate my folders and emails back into my Gmail, after configuring Mail (Mac) not to save deleted messages. I just need to find out how to configure these backup issues..

Thank you for your link on the migration steps with Gmail, I really want to try that, I will find a moment and I will provide feedback here. I just wonder if the export puts everything in a bulk in an archive or if the emails are separated by folders, which would make my task much easier.

p.s.: I’m not sure I understood this sentence:
"You would thus have the configuration indicated on the corner of the net files stored on your hard drive on Mac with the messaging "mail".

Thank you very much for your information and advice!

I am adding the two links I found on forums/articles:

What is the "All Mail" folder in Gmail? What is the archiving action for Gmail?

How to delete the "All Mail" folder (Gmail)? - [Resolved]

I still haven't found a way to purge this "All Mail" folder, where it makes no sense to keep messages that I want to delete permanently to save space on Drive.

Reminder: the problem is that I have categorized some emails into folders (labels). If I delete the contents of the "All Mail" folder, I will also delete the contents of the labeled folders (not to mention the inbox, although a well-organized inbox is an empty inbox.. :-)

So I am still looking for a way to delete the contents of the "All Mail" folder without deleting the archived folders.

Otherwise, I will export, archive, or migrate messages into the folders to purge this "All Mail" folder. But then...? the messages will be archived back into this folder......... aargh... As Guluk said: "it's the reinvented Danaids' barrel".....

I also tried this tutorial:

Archiving and exporting emails from Gmail

but I don't understand why the "archive" option doesn't appear for all labels.. the context menu changes from one label (folder) to another. See the screenshots below:

Here I am:

Here I am no more:

New and I hope final contribution on this thread, I think I've arrived at a solution that suits me. Well, rather a set of solutions....

1. Archive important messages, if not already done, into folders and subfolders - sorry if you have 300,000 unclassified ones, that will serve as a lesson for you :-) This includes organizing the inbox.

2. Export the folders to your computer (by checking "export subfolders" on Mac)

3. Everything that remains: “trash", "all messages" -> delete. On Mail and double-check on Google. Be careful, deleted messages will be permanently removed. No going back or recovery possible.

4. Configuration of the Google mail server to place messages in the trash instead of "all messages" after deletion.

Google Support: GMAIL storage full because of the label << All messages >> What is this label for?

https://support.google.com/mail/thread/67354852/gmail-espace-de-stockage-plein-%C3%A0-cause-du-libell%C3%A9-tous-les-messages-a-quoi-sert-se-libell%C3%A9?hl=en

Mail configuration on Mac so that deleted messages are moved to the trash (and not to "all messages") after deletion.
 

5. Import archived folders if you want to use them again.

There you go, and with these settings, deleted messages will no longer sneak into the "all messages" folder and unnecessarily consume your storage space. For me, it's nearly 20 years of emails that I have deleted, I’m back under 1GB on my Google Drive, so I'm set for the next 20 years :-)

I would be happy to hear from people who have had this problem or who have tried my solution. Thank you very much for your previous and future contributions!

 

Hello, it's the reinvention of the bottomless pit.

Some email services keep deleted emails for a month or a week. So they come back, will disappear in a few days, and you'll complain that some were important.

[There's even Thunderbird that can keep a backup of your emails on your hard drive after emptying the trash and deleting the first security backup.]

If you have synchronization enabled, the phone can remember the emails and resend them to the PC, or the email service doesn't delete them right away when synchronization is enabled.

Try deleting them from 'all messages.' A 'inbox' folder might just present a list of emails to the reader of that inbox but they are still in the 'all messages' folder.

The advantage of working in the cloud is that you have more control over your data. That's my definition when I don't understand what they do with it and when.

I've still got a few GB used though

Are there data or is there space reserved for you on the Gmail server for your incoming mail?