Gmail – Filtering archived messages in Gmail

gmailgmail-archivegmail-filtersgmail-labels

I, like most, get a lot of email that isn't spam but isn't interesting. I read the first line preview and then archive it with a swipe on my iPhone. This causes an annoyance because the phone archives it without marking it as read, meaning when I use the web app or my mail app, I get numbers beside various labels.

If I search Gmail with the following filter:

-label:inbox -label:trash -label:sent -label:spam

then it pretty much just selects messages I've sent to archive. However if I then try to create a filter with that, Gmail changes it to: 

label:spam

every single damn time. All I want is to select only archived messages with a filter, and mark them as read.

Anyone have any idea how to get around this?

There must be a way.

Best Answer

You can use

in:(anywhere -inbox) label:unread

or 

in:anywhere label:(unread -inbox)

in:anywhere is the same as "All Mail": mails in inbox, archived, and sent mails. When used in conjection with labels, like label:any, it further expands to trash, spam, draft as well.

The () after the : makes it an AND operator: all conditions inside () must be fulfilled. So in:(anywhere -inbox) selects all mails, except those in inbox. Since all inbox mails are also labelled as inbox, putting it in label: also works.

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