How to Automatically Archive Emails in Gmail

In this article, we're going to show you how to automatically archive your emails in GMail. 

Why Archive?

Firstly, it keeps your inbox clean. Secondly, if you have hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of emails in your inbox, you may find your computer slowing down every time you open Outlook or Mac Mail, as they try to process all those emails. 

But I still need them...

Archiving doesn't delete your emails. It simply removes them from your inbox and puts them in your "All Mail" folder. You can still access them and search them using GMail.

So how do we do it? 

1. Log into your Gmail account

2. In the search field, enter the following:

label:inbox older_than:30d

That is, we're searching our inbox for items that are more than 30 days old. 

You can change the time limit by using the following letters:

d = days

m = months

y = years

So if you wanted to archive inbox items more than 6 months old, you'd use

label:inbox older_than:6m

3. Click More > Create Filter and you'll see the following window:

4. Click Create filter with this search. 

If you see this warning

click OK. 

You should see this window:

5. Check the "Skip the Inbox (Archive it)" checkbox and the "Also apply filter to x matching conversations." checkbox. 

6. Click "Create Filter"

This will run the filter on any existing message more than 30 days old, and create the rule for when any more recent emails become more than 30 days old. 

That's it. Happy archiving.