How I deleted all LinkedIn and Facebook Messages from the Inbox in one click
There are a few reasons why anyone would want to delete all messages from whatever Inbox from time to time. I for example doesn’t like seeing my Inboxes cluttered. Secondly I never want to keep things that I am certain will not help me in any way in the future. The things that I rather not keep are not limited to digital messages I throw out clothes, household items, people, and anything really that has served its purpose. That’s why I would have loved for LinkedIn and Facebook to have allowed for users to select all and delete LinkedIn and Facebook Messages. But neither of the two social media platforms allow for that.
Then you may want to delete your LinkedIn or Facebook Messages because you want to protect your relationship, or friendship, or generally your social life. You may also want to delete all your Facebook Messages just because you want to.
For whatever reason, you’ll realise that deleting all Facebook Messages (or LinkedIn Messages) is quite tedious if you want to do it manually. Deleting either of these messages will require you to do at least three clicks: open the message, look out for the message menu, choose delete, confirm delete, go to next message. If the number of messages you want to delete run to the thousands, you’ll agree with me that you’ll take sometimes a year just to clear your inbox. That’s why you need to use third party tools.
How I deleted all LinkedIn Messages
Deleting all LinkedIn messages may be more necessary than deleting Facebook Messages. This is because LinkedIn doesn’t allow people to post Happy Birthday messages on your LinkedIn Wall/Timeline, but straight to your inbox. On my last birthday that happened two weeks ago, I received over 3,000 birthday wishes on my LinkedIn inbox, effectively burying all other messages hundreds of scrolls below. When I was unable to get important messages buried down below, I decided it was time to clear my LinkedIn inbox.
To delete all inbox messages from LinkedIn, I first Googled “How to delete all LinkedIn Messages” and landed on this site. From the site I learned that I had to open LinkedIn Messages, scroll down to the last message, then scroll back to the first message, then click on the first message. After that I was told to press F12, Go to Console Tab, and paste the code given below in the tab, and press Enter:
;(function () {
setInterval(() => {
let deleted = false;
$('artdeco-dropdown-item').each((i, elem) => {
let txt = $(elem).text().trim();
if (txt === 'Delete') {
deleted = true;
$(elem).click();
}
});
if (deleted){
setTimeout(() => $('.msg-modal-delete-convo').find('.artdeco-button--primary').click(), 500)
} else {
$('.msg-conversation-card__list-action-icon').eq(1).click();
}
}, 350);
}());
The code works magic, only that you will give it some time and fast Internet connection as it deletes messages one by one. Just remember after deleting all your LinkedIn messages you will need to close the browser and restart it to deactivate the code.
How to delete all Facebook Messages
After successfully deleting all LinkedIn Messages, I thought I should try the code on Facebook Messages. The code did not work. Actually Facebook warned me that I was using a code that can be used to hack me. Then I Googled how to delete All Facebook Messages, and a website recommended that I use “Delete Facebook Messages” Google Chrome Extension. I installed the Extension.
Then as per the instructions provided by the Extension, I open my Facebook Messages through Open All Messages in Messenger, and ran the Extension. Within 15 minutes or so, all my messages ever since I joined Facebook were deleted.
Starting a Fresh
Now that my Facebook and LinkedIn inboxes are clear, I feel new – at least as far as interactions in those two social media platforms are concerned. To prevent the possibility of deleting all messages, I will be deleting all unnecessary messages either as soon as they come, or as soon as I am done with a conversation that has no future bearing. And all those “Say hi to your new Facebook friend” in Facebook Inbox or “Happy birthday!” on LinkedIn Inbox, they’ll be deleted as soon as they come.
Just remember that these methods may not be effective by the time you are reading this article, as these social media keep changing their codes to disallow third party tools from deleting content already posted on their platforms. They really need you to keep your messages intact so that they can use those to learn more about you in order to send you targeted ads.
Anyone knows how to prevent being wished Happy birthday through LinkedIn Inbox?
See also: How to circumvent the boring Facebook Algorithm using Facebook See First feature