Gmail – How to delete email sent to theself in Sent folder without deleting it in Inbox

deletegmailgmail-labels

I sent an email to myself to keep it under a label, but when I delete it in Sent Mail, it deletes the message in the Inbox as well.

How can I keep it in Inbox (or under a different label) and delete it in Sent Mail? (Note this is different from other threads about deleting it in Inbox and keeping it in Sent Mail.)

Best Answer

Gmail treats it like a single entity (email) instead of a sent-received pair, so if you delete it either from inbox or from Sent messages, it will be removed from both places.

Related Solutions

Gmail IMAP – Delete Inbox Message Without Affecting Sent Mail

Don't delete it from your inbox. Archive it.

Seriously it is that simple.

You can put a label on the email if you want. When you archive the email the inbox label is removed. If it has no other label it will still be in "All Mail" and in "Sent Mail".

Gmail – Deleting Emails from a Folder if Not Contained in Another Folder

You won't be able to do it with a filter, because those act when the message comes in. However, it's simple to do with a search.

label:first -label:second

That search string will return all conversations with the label first and do not have the label second. The minus sign (- or hyphen, if you prefer) means negation.

More information about search operators is available at Advanced search.

If you want to exclude more labels, simply add them to your search string:

label:first -label:second -label:third

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Gmail IMAP – Delete Inbox Message Without Affecting Sent Mail

Gmail – Deleting Emails from a Folder if Not Contained in Another Folder

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