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The vault

After a few years, All mail and your search results fill up with conversations that were finished long ago. The vault is long-term storage for them. A conversation in the vault is kept, but it stays out of your way until you go looking for it.

The vault is new, and not every team has it yet. If there's no Vault in the left column, your team doesn't have it.

What the vault does

A conversation in the vault appears in Vault, in the left column, and nowhere else. It's gone from the inbox, All mail, Sent, Archived, its labels' lists and your bookmarks. Search doesn't find it either, unless you add in:vault to what you're looking for (see Finding conversations).

Moving a conversation into the vault moves it for the whole team. It keeps its labels, and whoever was assigned to it stays assigned. If the person writes to you again, it comes back to the inbox by itself, as an archived conversation does.

Moving conversations into the vault

Anyone on the team can do this. For one conversation, choose Move to vault in the conversation's More menu. For several, tick them in a list and choose Move to vault in the ⋯ menu of the bar that appears.

Either way, a notice appears with an Undo.

Moving a whole stretch of time

Admins and the Owner can move everything from a stretch of time in one go, such as all of last year's mail. It's in Settings → Vault.

  1. In Everything from, choose the latest day to move.
  2. In Back to, choose the earliest day, or leave it empty to go all the way back. Both days are included.
  3. If you'd like to be able to find this batch again, choose a label in Add a label. Every conversation that moves gets it.
  4. Press Preview. Jelly shows how many conversations would move, with the subjects and dates of the newest ones.
  5. Press Move to the vault to go ahead, or Cancel to change the dates.

A conversation counts by the date of its newest message. Only conversations that are in the inbox, archived or snoozed are moved. Spam and trash stay where they are, and so do conversations in a mailbox you aren't in.

A long stretch can take a minute or so to move.

Moving conversations out

Open Vault in the left column and find the conversation. Press Move to inbox or Archive at the top of it, or in the ⋯ menu on its row. To move several, tick them and press Move to inbox or Archive in the bar that appears.