How to Delete an Email Account in Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. (2023)

How to Delete a Gmail Account

Many people assume that it's necessary to delete Google account in order to delete a Gmail account, but that's not the case at all. Google makes it easy to remove individual services, allowing its users to keep their Google accounts and use them to log in to YouTube, Play Store, and other Google products.

Before you delete your Gmail account, you should consider downloading your data and storing it in an encrypted form online using Google Drive, Dropbox, and other cloud hosting services or locally as a file archive.

To download your Gmail data, including all of the messages and attachments in your Gmail:

1. Visit the Download your data page.
2. Click the "Deselect all" button.
3. Scroll down until you see "Mail" and click the checkbox next to it.
4. Scroll down until you reach the bottom of the page and click the blue Next step button.
5. Choose file type, frequency, and destination and click Create export.
6. Wait for the export process to finish and check your Gmail inbox for a link to your data.

Now that you've downloaded your data, it's time to take a look at how to delete an email account registered with Google without deleting all other Google services:

1. Open the following URL in your web browser: https://myaccount.google.com/
2. Select the Data & personalization option from the menu on the left.
3. Scroll to the "Download, delete, or make a plan for your data" section and click the "Delete a service or your account option."
4. Click Delete a service.
5. Enter your password.
6. Click the trash bin icon next to the service you want to remove.

How to Delete Yahoo Email Account

Considering that more than 1 billion Yahoo! accounts have been breached in the past, it's safe to say that the company is one of the least trustworthy providers of email services in the world. Naturally, there are many former Yahoo! Mail users who would rather completely remove their email accounts than trust Yahoo to sufficiently protect them.

If you count yourself among them, this is what you need to do to delete your Yahoo email account:

1. Open the following URL in your web browser: https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user
2. Log in with your username and password.
3. When you reach the confirmation page, click "Continue delete my account."

The following information will be erased: Yahoo! ID, Mail data, Address Book data, Small Business data, GeoCities data, Briefcase data, My Yahoo! data, HotJobs, and even your Flickr data. Keep in mind that the process can take up 90 days to complete. If you live in the EU, you can contact Yahoo! directly with a GDPR data erasure request.

How to Delete Outlook Account

The word Outlook can refer to both the popular desktop email client as well as the free email service from Microsoft (better known as Outlook.com). Let's start with deleting an email account from Outlook, the email client.

The following steps explain how to delete an email account from Outlook 2016, 2013, and 2010:

1. Open Outlook and select File in the upper left corner of the screen.
2. Click the Account Settings option and choose Settings again.
3. Select the account you want to remove and then click Remove.
4. Confirm your choice by clicking the Yes button.

To delete an Outlook.com account:

1. Open the following URL in your web browser: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=845493
2. Read the information and click Next when ready.
3. Select all checkboxes to acknowledge that you've reviewed each of the most common account closure effects.
4. Choose a reason why you want to remove your data.
5. Click the Mark account for the closure button.

Microsoft gives its users 60 days to change their minds. After 60 days, your account will be permanently closed and unrecoverable.

How to Delete an AOL Email Account

AOL lets its users close their email accounts at any time, and it even lets them download their data for backup purposes. However, it can take up to 30 days for the request to finish processing and the download to become available, which is why we won't cover the process in this article. If you would like to learn more about it, you can visit AOL's help page, where it's described in detail.

To delete an AOL email account:

1. Open the following URL in your web browser: https://aol.mydashboard.oath.com/delete-my-account
2. Read the information on terminating your account.
3. Click "Continue delete my account."

In most cases, it takes AOL around 30 days to remove accounts. The only exceptions are Australia, India, New Zealand, Brazil, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, where it can take up to 180 days. By implementing a long delay, AOL wants to discourage fraudulent activity.

How to Delete a Zoho Mail Account

Assuming that you're an individual user and not an organization, you can delete your Zoho Mail account directly from your account settings. However, Zoho Mail users whose email address is associated with the Zoho People HR management service must ask their company to close their account for them.

To delete a Zoho Mail account:

1. Log in to your Zoho Mail inbox and click the My Profile icon in the upper-right corner.
2. Select My Account.
3. Select Preferences.
4. Click Close Account.
5. To confirm your choice, enter your Zoho Mail password and select Close Account again.
6. Finally, click OK to confirm.

How to Delete an iCloud Mail Account

Because your iCloud Mail mailbox is tied to your Apple ID, the only way to remove it is to permanently delete your entire Apple ID, which will prevent you from using many Apple services. If you’re still committed to deleting your iCloud Mail account, we highly recommend you first remove all devices associated with it (such as your iPhone or Mac so that you can later easily associate them with a different mail address).

To remove a device associated with your Apple ID:

1. Sign in to your iCloud mailbox.
2. Navigate to the Devices section.
3. Select the device you want to remove.
4. Click the Remove from account option.
5. Repeat for each device.

To delete your Apple ID (and your iCloud Mail account with it):

1. Sign in to your iCloud mailbox.
2. Scroll down and click the Go to your Apple ID account page link.
3. Click Manage your privacy under Data & Privacy.
4. Click Request to Delete Your Account at the bottom.
5. Confirm your decision to delete your Apple ID.

How to Delete a ProtonMail Account

As a security- and privacy-oriented service provider, ProtonMail employs a highly secure account deletion process that prevents deleted accounts from being recovered. What’s more, the service also doesn’t recycle usernames, so you don’t need to worry about someone registering your former email address and using it to scam others.

Here’s what you need to do to delete an email account:

1. Log in to your ProtonMail mailbox and go to Settings.
2. Go to the Account tab and click the Delete your account button at the bottom.
3. Confirm your decision to remove the email address.

As you can see, learning how to delete an email account is easy if you’re a ProtonMail user. Just make sure to think your decision through because there’s no going back. You can also delete your email account on Android, using a web browser like Chrome, but deleting it on desktop is more convenient.

How to Delete a Tutanota Account

Many Tutanota users have struggled to figure out what they need to do to remove their mailbox, so don’t feel bad if you’re currently experiencing the same issue. In reality, Tutanota is to blame because the privacy-oriented service provider decided to hide the Delete Account option in the Subscription section of Admin Settings. Why? We have no idea, but we do know how to delete an email account you no longer need.

Follow these steps to delete a Tutanota account:

1. Log in to your Tutanota mailbox.
2. Go to Settings and click Subscription under Admin Settings.
3. Scroll down and choose to delete your mailbox.
4. If you want to transfer your Tutanota email address to another account, enter it in the corresponding field.

How to Delete a Mail.com Account

It doesn’t matter if you want to delete your Mail.com mailbox for security reasons or simply because you no longer need it, you can get rid of it—and all messages associated with it—in just a few simple steps.

To delete a Mail.com account:

1. Log in with your Mail.com address and password.
2. Click Home and My Account.
3. Click Delete Account on the left.
4. Confirm your decision to remove your Mail.com address and Save changes.

The good news is that Mail.com blocks all deleted email addresses for one year to prevent cybercriminals and scammers from taking advantage of them.

How to Delete a GMX Email Account

GMX makes it very easy for its users to delete their mailbox, and all their emails with it. Just like Mail.com, it blocks deleted mail addresses from being registered again for one year, giving you plenty of time to tell everyone you know that you’re no longer using the address.

Here are step-by-step instructions for deleting a GMX email account:

1. Log in with your Mail.com address and password.
2. Navigate to Home and My account.
3. On the left side, click Delete Account.
4. Confirm your decision to delete your GMX address.
5. Click Save changes.

As you can see, the GMX mailbox deletion process is virtually identical to the Mail.com deletion process. That’s because the two email services are owned by the same parent company, 1&1 Mail & Media Inc.

Bonus: Clean Your Mailbox with Clean Email

Just because your inbox has become messy and disorganized doesn’t mean that your only option is to delete it and start from scratch. Before you give up your email address, consider using a bulk email organizer like Clean Email to give your inbox a second chance.

Clean Email works with most service providers mentioned in this article, and all you need to do to get started is log in with your email address and password. From there, you can instruct Clean Email to analyze the content of your inbox and intelligently group messages according to their category so that you can organize them in bulk instead of having to organize each message individually.

In addition to bulk email organization, Clean Email can automate repetitive tasks to automatically keep your inbox clean for you, block unwanted senders to make sure that emails from them will never reach your inbox again, postpone unimportant messages for later, and much more.

Conclusion

In part thanks to sweeping data protection and privacy regulations like the EU's GDPR, all providers of email services make it possible to easily remove an email account. In this article, we described how to delete an email account created with five different providers, and most other email providers feature a similar email deletion process.

How to Delete An Email Account - FAQs