It’s not possible to remove the Important Folder in Gmail but there is a way to easily stop all incoming emails from being duplicated in that folder.
Let’s face it. The Important folder in Gmail is deemed pointless for most people. And if you’ve found your way to this page, you probably find it an inconvenience having to delete duplicate emails that are both in your inbox and the Important folder.
But in Gmail’s defense, we are not using the Important folder properly. It was not necessarily designed to duplicate every single email you receive, only the ones you allow via setting up a filter. So just like you can set up a filter to only save certain emails to the Important folder, you can set up a filter to block them all. Here’s how to do it.
Go to your Gmail Account in your browser and click the gear box in the top right corner, then select See all settings.
Then select Filters and Blocked Addresses and click Create a new filter in the bottom right.
Once inside the filter settings, type in a bunch of gibberish letters in the Doesn’t have section, then click Create Filter.
This will prevent any email from being duplicated in the Gmail Important folder, unless of course someone emails you and uses those exact same letters in their email.
How to Properly Use the Gmail Important Folder
So you see, in the same way you prevented all emails from coming into your Important folder, you can delete this filter and create a new filter that only allows an email from specific friend, for example. Just enter their email in the ‘Doesn’t have’ line and all emails will be kept out of your Important folder except for your friends. Create additional filters for other emails such as work emails or any email you want to preeminently save but not have cluttering up your inbox.
Creating any single filter for certain emails will prevent all other emails from going into your Important filter. The gibberish method simply removes all emails for those who don’t any emails being saved there.
Personally, I would prefer gmail removes the feature that deleted all emails from your trash after 30 days. That way, you could delete emails you want to save for a certain period of time without them being removed from the trash bin automatically. But I digress…