?

Hi all,

I noticed that this message thread had been locked, did not read all the way through so don’t know why it was blocked, but wanted to respond because I think I have answers to both of these questions. My profuse apologies if all the questions were eventually? answered and my post is just redundantly beating a dead horse.

First, the Important folder in Gmail filters inbox messages to contain only messages sent to you by real human beings and discussion lists you have signed up for. It filters out bulk messages like those sent by commercial entities like retail stores, etc. If you don’t regularly clean out this crap from your inbox, it can be useful. If you delete all these messages, it does not delete from your inbox. I periodically delete all of them.

Second, I have a way to clean out folders with large numbers of emails other than deleting one by one. Here is an excerpt from my book in Chapter 4 on Outlook that uses a combination of collapsing groups and arranging messages by sender.

The Expand/collapse groups command can be useful for speeding up the process of clearing unwanted messages out of your folders. By default, message lists are expanded.

To collapse groups:

1. Press Alt to open the Upper ribbon, and Right arrow to the View tab.
2. Tab to the Expand/collapse groups submenu (the shortcut is Alt V E) and press Enter. The four submenu choices are: Collapse this group, Expand this group, Collapse all groups, and Expand all groups.
3. Down arrow to Collapse all groups and press Enter.

How collapsed groups appear depend on how they are initially sorted. If sorted by date and today happens to be Tuesday, collapsed groups are listed as follows: today, yesterday, Sunday, last week, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, last month, and older.

If you are OK with deleting all messages in a particular folder that are more than one month old, this can be quickly done by Down arrowing to the Older collapsed group, pressing Delete, and then Enter to confirm moving them to the Deleted items or Trash folder.

If a message list is initially sorted by sender (See Chapter 4.5 on how to do this), they are collapsed alphabetically with the name of the sender, number of total messages, and number of unread messages in the group indicated. For example, as you Down arrow, you will hear: From: Amazon.com: 6 item(s), 5 unread; From: Andrew Jones: 11 items; and so on.

My favorite example concerns a student I had several years ago who had allowed about 20,000 messages to accumulate in his inbox. We first sorted his messages by sender and then collapsed all the groups. He then navigated to the collapsed Facebook group which contained about 8,000 messages. With one or two keystrokes, he moved all those messages to his trash folder. The process took about ten minutes because it takes time to move such a massive number of messages from one folder to another, but that was much better than deleting them one by one.

When finished sorting by sender, and/or collapsing all groups, repeat the above steps to return to the default with all groups expanded and sorted by date.

?

On May 18, 2025, at 7:44?AM, Adrian Spratt via groups.io <adrian@...> wrote:

?

Thank you. I almost look forward to the next time it happens so I can try this solution.

?

From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Liel Ben Simon ???? ?? ????? via groups.io
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2025 12:17 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [JFW-Users] I try to fix a JAWS problem and Narrator goes berserk

?

Hi, in ?Narrator you are working with navigation mode.

In order to return to the scan mode press Caps Lock/Insert+Space.?

???? ??-iPhone ???

??-18 ???? 2025, ???? 6:59, ??Adrian Spratt via groups.io ?<adrian@...> ???/?:

?

Hi.

?

Ever since I lost my Dectalk Express, I’ve used different JAWS voices and voice rates, depending on whether I’m in the JAWS cursor, PC cursor, etc., to address my different reading needs. JAWS apparently doesn’t like dispensing favors to more than one voice and voice rate at a time, and so eventually I need to unload and reload it. Sometimes I can’t get it speaking again, so I bring up Narrator. Here’s the problem I hope someone here can help with.

?

In these situations, Narrator doesn’t act normally. For example, I’ll be on the desktop and I’ll press alt-F4 to initiate a PC restart. Narrator announces it doesn’t recognize the keystroke. I need to do a series of workarounds to get the restart process begun.

?

The worst problem is that if I land on my Outlook folder in these circumstances, Narrator starts reading each message over and over. Nothing I do can stop it except pushing the Physical shutdown button on the PC.

?

I imagine calling Vispero and being told to call Microsoft, then calling Microsoft and being told to call Vispero. So before setting off on that merry-go-round, I’m hoping someone here has a suggestion or two.

?

Thanks.

?

?

Hi.

?

Ever since I lost my Dectalk Express, I’ve used different JAWS voices and voice rates, depending on whether I’m in the JAWS cursor, PC cursor, etc., to address my different reading needs. JAWS apparently doesn’t like dispensing favors to more than one voice and voice rate at a time, and so eventually I need to unload and reload it. Sometimes I can’t get it speaking again, so I bring up Narrator. Here’s the problem I hope someone here can help with.

?

In these situations, Narrator doesn’t act normally. For example, I’ll be on the desktop and I’ll press alt-F4 to initiate a PC restart. Narrator announces it doesn’t recognize the keystroke. I need to do a series of workarounds to get the restart process begun.

?

The worst problem is that if I land on my Outlook folder in these circumstances, Narrator starts reading each message over and over. Nothing I do can stop it except pushing the Physical shutdown button on the PC.

?

I imagine calling Vispero and being told to call Microsoft, then calling Microsoft and being told to call Vispero. So before setting off on that merry-go-round, I’m hoping someone here has a suggestion or two.

?

Thanks.

?

Hi,

I have discord scripts for jaws. How can I copy them from jfw 24 to jfw 25?

thanks

?

?

--

Cordially,

Kimsan Song

Kimsan_song@...

?

??-18 ???? 2025, ???? 6:59, ??Adrian Spratt via groups.io ?<adrian@...> ???/?:?

?

Hi.

?

Ever since I lost my Dectalk Express, I’ve used different JAWS voices and voice rates, depending on whether I’m in the JAWS cursor, PC cursor, etc., to address my different reading needs. JAWS apparently doesn’t like dispensing favors to more than one voice and voice rate at a time, and so eventually I need to unload and reload it. Sometimes I can’t get it speaking again, so I bring up Narrator. Here’s the problem I hope someone here can help with.

?

In these situations, Narrator doesn’t act normally. For example, I’ll be on the desktop and I’ll press alt-F4 to initiate a PC restart. Narrator announces it doesn’t recognize the keystroke. I need to do a series of workarounds to get the restart process begun.

?

The worst problem is that if I land on my Outlook folder in these circumstances, Narrator starts reading each message over and over. Nothing I do can stop it except pushing the Physical shutdown button on the PC.

?

I imagine calling Vispero and being told to call Microsoft, then calling Microsoft and being told to call Vispero. So before setting off on that merry-go-round, I’m hoping someone here has a suggestion or two.

?

Thanks.

?

I use POP3 for as long as it is available. I see no problem with it. It is good enough for me, although depending on mail usage, it may not be for everyone.

?

?

?

Sieghard:

?

Sorry, you are correct.

?

I should have mentioned that I’m using the Imap interface.

?

I think this is why when I delete something from Outlook, it also gets deleted from the g-mail server.

?

Now, my quandry is figuring out how to clean up some of my very large g-mail folders.

?

I originally thought that I could just clear out my important e-mails folder, but I think if I do that, those e-mails will be gone from my sent folder, and my all mail folder as well.

?

So, I’m trying to figure out the best way to proceed here without risking loosing any e-mails I wish to hang onto.

?

Tom Behler

?

?

Tom, first of all I did not see whether you said anywhere if you set up your Gmail account in Outlook using IMAP or if you are still using the old POP3 protocol which nobody should really use any more. Yes, I know I am probably going to get some nasty replies from some fossils on the list who think POP3 is similar to the second coming, but if you use your Gmail account on your computer and possible on your iPhone, then POP3 has no place in this world any more.

In fact, it is POP3 where you had the option to “delete from server”, the option you mention in Outlook Options > Advanced simply means that you have to confirm when you delete a message you already deleted, i.e. you first delete the message from your Inbox, then you now go to your Deleted items folder and you delete it from there. Personally I have that box unchecked because once I delete messages from my Deleted Items folder, I am pretty sure I want them gone and I don’t have to be prompted yet again whether I want to do this.

Now, as far as the protocol goes, if you have set up your Gmail account using IMAP, then any change you make in Outlook will be reflected on your Gmail account. Basically, the accounts sync which is why IMAP or, if you are using Outlook.com, Exchange is a much better protocol for people who access their email on more than 1 device. If you delete a message in Outlook on the computer and you then go to your iPhone (just as an example), that message will also be gone. If you reply to an email on your iPhone and then go to your computer, this message will shows as “replied” and the message you sent will be in your sent items folder.

?

?

?

Jen:

?

In Outlook Classic, under advanced options, I have an option that says ask before permanently deleting items in the deleted folder for all accounts.

?

I have this option checked, so always get asked that question before closing the program.

?

I just did a test by sending myself a test e-mail.

?

I checked on the g-mail website, and the test e-mail was indeed there.

?

The message? also came through to Outlook Classic, at which time I deleted it.

?

?

?

?

How do you save email to put in a folder in your document’s?

Thanks Patti

?

?

Richard:

?

I actually do save extremely important e-mails in separate OneDrive folders, and on an external hard drive, and those saved messages ?have the .msg extension.

?

It’s those other thousands of messages with varying levels of importance that I’m not sure how to handle.

?

Tom Behler

?

?

?

If Outlook Classic is configured to delete from the server, then deleting them in Outlook should take care of it.

I've been in your shoes with thousands of emails that I let stack up, but since I use an Outlook.com account, it didn't become a storage issue, so much as a management issue.

I ended up deleting tons one by one over a long period of time and now try to keep it manageable and created a few folders where I want to keep things so I move emails into them as needed and delete the rest.

I suppose you also could save messages as .msg (I think that is the Outlook extension by default) and keep them on an external drive so you could open them later in Outlook?

?

That might be worth asking Microsoft about since that is really an Outlook question and not a specific gmail question.

?

HTH,

?

?

?

Richard:

?

I have Outlook classic configured to delete mail from the server once it is no longer needed, so I’m wondering if I can’t just do things through Outlook itself?

?

Will do more inquiring into the difference between all mail and important mail in g-mail, and would appreciate the thoughts of others as well.

?

Tom Behler

?

?

?

My initial thought is that you have to do this from the gmail web site.

Or at least, check your gmail settings so that if you delete something on your computer, it deletes on the server.

Not knowing all the details of the account type etc., it is hard to be more confident, but even then, with gmail, I'm not that knowledgeable.? But I understand the concept of how it often does things.

I suspect the difference between important mail and all mail, is that gmail has deemed certain emails as important; whether you have or not.

That might be a good AI question of ChatGPT, Copilot, or Peplexity, etc.

?

Something like, what is the difference in Gmail between imprtant messages and all messages?

?

Good luck,

?

?

?

Re-sending due to no initial response.

?

Tom Behler

?

?

Hello, everyone.

?

I don’t know if this will be considered off topic for this list, but I thought I’d try, since there are so many knowledgeable people out there.

?

If this is considered off topic, please reply to me personally at:

?

tombehler@...

?

I manage my personal g-mail account through Outlook Classic as part of my Microsoft 365 subscription.

?

I recently Got a notification from Google that my g-mail account space is 50% full.

?

I have three folders that literally contain thousands of messages:

?

My sent folder;? my all mail folder;? and a folder called important mail.

?

I’d like to clear out these folders to some degree, but am not quite sure how to go about it efficiently.

?

I would be happy to ?save sent e-mails from the last year or two.

?

I also wouldn’t mind paring my all mail and important mail folders back significantly, but am not sure what the difference is between all mail and important mail.

?

I do have Outlook Classic set to automatically delete e-mails from the server whenever I invoke the delete function and indicate that I’m sure of my deletion step.

?

Any help on this would be appreciated.

?

Thank you!

?

Tom Behler

?

?

Tom, first of all I did not see whether you said anywhere if you set up your Gmail account in Outlook using IMAP or if you are still using the old POP3 protocol which nobody should really use any more. Yes, I know I am probably going to get some nasty replies from some fossils on the list who think POP3 is similar to the second coming, but if you use your Gmail account on your computer and possible on your iPhone, then POP3 has no place in this world any more.

In fact, it is POP3 where you had the option to “delete from server”, the option you mention in Outlook Options > Advanced simply means that you have to confirm when you delete a message you already deleted, i.e. you first delete the message from your Inbox, then you now go to your Deleted items folder and you delete it from there. Personally I have that box unchecked because once I delete messages from my Deleted Items folder, I am pretty sure I want them gone and I don’t have to be prompted yet again whether I want to do this.

Now, as far as the protocol goes, if you have set up your Gmail account using IMAP, then any change you make in Outlook will be reflected on your Gmail account. Basically, the accounts sync which is why IMAP or, if you are using Outlook.com, Exchange is a much better protocol for people who access their email on more than 1 device. If you delete a message in Outlook on the computer and you then go to your iPhone (just as an example), that message will also be gone. If you reply to an email on your iPhone and then go to your computer, this message will shows as “replied” and the message you sent will be in your sent items folder.

?

?

?

Jen:

?

In Outlook Classic, under advanced options, I have an option that says ask before permanently deleting items in the deleted folder for all accounts.

?

I have this option checked, so always get asked that question before closing the program.

?

I just did a test by sending myself a test e-mail.

?

I checked on the g-mail website, and the test e-mail was indeed there.

?

The message? also came through to Outlook Classic, at which time I deleted it.

?

?

?

?

?

How do you save email to put in a folder in your document’s?

Thanks Patti

?

?

Richard:

?

I actually do save extremely important e-mails in separate OneDrive folders, and on an external hard drive, and those saved messages ?have the msg extension.

?

It’s those other thousands of messages with varying levels of importance that I’m not sure how to handle.

?

Tom Behler

?

?

?

If Outlook Classic is configured to delete from the server, then deleting them in Outlook should take care of it.

I've been in your shoes with thousands of emails that I let stack up, but since I use an Outlook.com account, it didn't become a storage issue, so much as a management issue.

I ended up deleting tons one by one over a long period of time and now try to keep it manageable and created a few folders where I want to keep things so I move emails into them as needed and delete the rest.

I suppose you also could save messages as .msg (I think that is the Outlook extension by default) and keep them on an external drive so you could open them later in Outlook?

?

That might be worth asking Microsoft about since that is really an Outlook question and not a specific gmail question.

?

HTH,

?

?

?

Richard:

?

I have Outlook classic configured to delete mail from the server once it is no longer needed, so I’m wondering if I can’t just do things through Outlook itself?

?

Will do more inquiring into the difference between all mail and important mail in g-mail, and would appreciate the thoughts of others as well.

?

Tom Behler

?

?

?

My initial thought is that you have to do this from the gmail web site.

Or at least, check your gmail settings so that if you delete something on your computer, it deletes on the server.

Not knowing all the details of the account type etc., it is hard to be more confident, but even then, with gmail, I'm not that knowledgeable.? But I understand the concept of how it often does things.

I suspect the difference between important mail and all mail, is that gmail has deemed certain emails as important; whether you have or not.

That might be a good AI question of ChatGPT, Copilot, or Peplexity, etc.

?

Something like, what is the difference in Gmail between imprtant messages and all messages?

?

Good luck,

?

?

?

Re-sending due to no initial response.

?

Tom Behler

?

?

Hello, everyone.

?

I don’t know if this will be considered off topic for this list, but I thought I’d try, since there are so many knowledgeable people out there.

?

If this is considered off topic, please reply to me personally at:

?

tombehler@...

?

I manage my personal g-mail account through Outlook Classic as part of my Microsoft 365 subscription.

?

I recently Got a notification from Google that my g-mail account space is 50% full.

?

I have three folders that literally contain thousands of messages:

?

My sent folder;? my all mail folder;? and a folder called important mail.

?

I’d like to clear out these folders to some degree, but am not quite sure how to go about it efficiently.

?

I would be happy to ?save sent e-mails from the last year or two.

?

I also wouldn’t mind paring my all mail and important mail folders back significantly, but am not sure what the difference is between all mail and important mail.

?

I do have Outlook Classic set to automatically delete e-mails from the server whenever I invoke the delete function and indicate that I’m sure of my deletion step.

?

Any help on this would be appreciated.

?

Thank you!

?

Tom Behler

?