TechRepublic – Andy Wolber: “You might want to mass delete email from Gmail for many reasons: To remove non-work-related messages from an account, to achieve “inbox zero” as part of a personal productivity effort, or—more mundanely—to reduce the storage space used by attachments. Some people pursue #NoEmail—and start to treat email as an ephemeral communication channel instead of a permanent archive. Before you start to mass delete items from Gmail, I recommend that you export your current email data. To do this, use Google Takeout at https://takeout.google.com. Choose the “Select None” button, then scroll down the page to Mail. Move the slider to the right of Mail to “on.” (You may export just some of your email: Select the down arrow to the left of the slider, then choose one—or more—Gmail labels to select items tagged with those labels to export.)…”