How I took an old Yahoo Junk Account and turned it into a nice, clean, useful Gmail Account

This is a post for the anal-person in all us. As most people know, I have lived in the email world for the past year and a half as the co-founder of PhilterIt. Our entire premise is that email is better organized and managed into visual icons. To that effect, our first product was a brand new email client - a visual interface to delight the masses (here’s AOL’s exact copy). Anyhoo, in order to test our new email client, I kept an old Yahoo junk email account. This is the account that many millions of Americans keep - the address that you use to leave your footprint all over the internet without letting retailers find you at home, ie Gmail.

When we moved away from the stand-alone client to our new Chrome extension, I decided it was time to put our own product to the test and abandon the old, crusty Yahoo account once and for all. (On a side note, I’m pretty much drunk on the Google kool-aid, a point which I will post about later). With the help of email unsubscribe service Unroll.me, I turned this also-ran steaming pile of email into a useful repository of my most important brand messages. Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1: After setting up a new Gmail account, use the Gear dropdown in the top right hand corner to access the settings. From here,  select Accounts and Import and follow the prompts on the fourth line: Check mail from other accounts (using POP3). This allows you to auto-import all of your messages from your old account. It’s like a vacuum - it just sucks ‘em all out and into Gmail. (Note - set it and forget it for a day or so, in order for Gmail to get all of the messages and fully sync).

Step 2: Sync your account to Unroll.me and quickly unsubscribe from all of the many brands that have assaulted your inbox with offers you just don’t care about or need. This contains the influx, but what about the seven thousand legacy unread messages?

Step 3: Install the PhilterIt sidebar to Gmail (you must be using Chrome). PhilterIt will automatically detect and label all of your brands (Note: as above, set it and forget it for a few hours while PhilterIt reaches back and tags all the old emails in your inbox).

Step 4. Now here’s where you have to have some patience and throw on an old favorite movie in the background, while you’re on your couch on a cold, rainy Sunday. One day we'll get this automated, but for now, use PhilterIt’s instant search to pull up each of your icons. I just started by typing “A”, working through those and then moving on to “B”. It’s not fun, but it’s a one shot deal and, once you’re done, you’re done! As my dad used to say, “In the time, you’re complaining to me you could have already been finished by now!”

Step 5. Use Google’s native features to select all of your emails at once. It’s amazing how quickly your unread counter will decrease. You can even search within an icon if you only want to delete “Amazon deals” but want to keep confirmations and receipts. Either delete, archive, or mark emails as read. The goal is for the counter to be down to zero when you’re done.

Step 6. Use PhilterIt’s dropdown to select your personal messages and see what’s been buried in there. I found an old email exchange between my now-deceased grandfather, my brother and my sister. It was a real treat.

Step 7. Finally, use our one-click skip the inbox feature to set up a sidebar that matters. Pick the “junk brands” you care about: Amazon, American Express, LinkedIn, Groupon, and then ensure that only emails to those brands go to the icon, where you can check them periodically.

Step 8. Now that all of your messages have been either deleted or marked read, make the inbox work for you. Using Google’s “Unread First” view, you will now have new or unread emails displayed on to. Check periodically and unsubscribe from the new junk. And add new icons as emails come along (eg newsletters) that you'll want to read on your own time and in batches.

Just writing this down leaves me with a sense of peace. An inbox that was clogged to the gills for 10 years with 3,500+ unread messages, now has one unread message in the inbox…and that’s it! My personal, primary Gmail account remains personal and high priority, and this new account captures receipts, tracking information, flight information and other non-urgent email. Google - you win again.