How to delete all of the emails on your iPad using a simple trick

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ipad pro 10.5-inch with keyboard and apple pencilHollis Johnson/Business Insider

  • Your iPad’s Mail app doesn’t give you an obvious way to delete all the email in a folder, but it’s easy to do with just a few taps.
  • Apple provides a workaround to move all your email at once by selecting a message, holding the Move button, and then deselecting the email.
  • If you organize email into multiple folders, repeat this process for each folder.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Email is an utterly pervasive part of our life on the internet. Everyone uses the internet, and odds are that you juggle multiple email accounts on your mobile devices — one of personal messages, one for work, and possibly more. With so much email in your life, it’s likely that you occasionally need to delete all the email on your iPad at once.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t give you a "delete everything" button. There isn’t even a one-tap way to select all your email. That’s okay, though — there’s a simple workaround that you can use to do just that.  

Unfortunately, even this workaround has its limitations. You can’t select all the email on your iPad at once unless you keep everything in your inbox. If you tend to file email into different folders to keep it better organized, you’ll need to delete email one folder at a time. 

How to delete all the email in a folder on your iPad

1. Open the Mail app.

2. Tap on the folder that you want to empty, such as the inbox or any other folder on your device.

3. At the top of the folder, tap "Edit." (If the mailboxes pane is visible, don’t accidentally tap "Edit" in that.)

Delete 1Dave Johnson/Business Insider

4. Tap the first message in the folder to select it.

5. Tap and hold "Move" at the bottom of the screen.

Delete 2Dave Johnson/Business Insider

6. Without lifting your finger off "Move," tap the selected message again — this will deselect it. Then lift your finger off "Move."

7. The view should now change to show all the messages in the folder selected. If this takes a moment to appear, don’t worry — if you have a lot of email, this could be a slow process.

8. Tap the folder into which you want to move the emails — in this case, the Trash.

Delete 3Dave Johnson/Business Insider

If you change your mind, just tap "Cancel" or close the Mail app.

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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Dave Johnson)

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