If you’re like most people, your Mac mail is a mess. You might have dozens of messages in your inbox, some of which you’ve read and some of which you haven’t. You might have folders full of messages that you never even opened. And the messages themselves are scattered all over the screen and desktop. Here’s how to clean up your Mac mail:

  1. Open Mail.app on your Mac and click on the “Inbox” icon at the top left corner of the window. This will open your inbox in a list format.
  2. If you have any unread messages, click on the “Unread” badge next to each one to mark it as read. If you don’t want to see unread messages anymore, click on the “Hide Unread Messages” button at the top right corner of the window (it looks like three lines).
  3. To view all your messages, including those that you’ve already read, click on the “All Mail” icon at the top left corner of the window (it looks like an envelope). This will open a list of all your emails in a grid format. You can scroll through this list by using either arrow keys or your mouse cursor (click and hold down your mouse button while moving it). To delete an email from this list, simply drag it off to one side or hit delete key on keyboard (or use Apple’s “Command+Delete” keyboard shortcut).
  4. If you want to organize your emails into folders, first make sure that “Show Folders” is checked under “View Options” in Mail’s View menu (it looks like three lines). Then drag and drop individual emails into desired folders (you can also use keyboard shortcuts: Control+click/Ctrl+drag an email and then drop it into desired folder). Once you’ve created a few folders, hit enter/return key on keyboard or hit OK button in View menu to ..