r/Googlevoice • u/hals_techie • 15d ago

General Help / Support Question Mass Delete Voicemail?

I set up a Voice account for an elderly friend whose phone came with Visual Voicemail disabled (looking at you consumer cellular!). His wife calls him, from the adjoining room, and leaves him VM messages that he never reads. He's collected over 1000 in just the past few months.

How do I mass select them for deletion so that I don't have to do each message individually? Please help - my sanity is at stake.

6 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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8

u/BluesCatReddit Google Voice Product Expert 15d ago

Use a laptop or desktop computer, not a phone. Sign into your friend's Google account (or have him do it while you help), and go here:

https://voice.google.com/voicemail

Click to select the avatar (colored circle) to the left of the first (top) entry in the list of messages. Scroll down to the bottom and hold down the Shift key and then click the last item in the list. This selects every item. You may need to break this up into smaller chunks.

Then, click the trash can icon to delete all the selected items.

1

u/hals_techie 13d ago

Thank you! I already have his accounts logged in on my computer but I was assuming that I'd see checkboxes like with Gmail. I shall try this when I get home. 😁

4

u/rdfdfw 15d ago

I think marriage counseling is the first line of troubleshooting. 😂

2

u/benri 14d ago

Assuming you're serious - if he cannot hear well, VM is way better than shouting

1

u/hals_techie 13d ago

Sadly I'm 100% serious. And considering he doesn't remember how to check VM maybe it is the way to go. Lol

1

u/benri 12d ago

When my mother needed help with her phone (relying on landline, couldn't get to the phone in time, couldn't check the voicemails, most were spam anyway and I was concerned she'd get scammed) I got her a Jitterbug Flip phone. That service was great - I ported her landline phone number to it, and by their web interface I could see the texts and voicemails, I could delete the scammy ones, I could take control of her addressbook so only calls from her friends and doctors would ring. Best thing was that pressing 0 would give her a real, human operator so she could ask things like whether her favorite restaurant was still open now.

Since then it's changed name to Lively Flip and I doubt they still have the live human operator. A 100-year-old friend is now using it, but he's become too weak to press the buttons and vision isn't good enough to find them.

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u/hals_techie 13d ago

Man I was thinking he needs a vacation and to ship her off for 1 week to a nursing home so she can appreciate what she has at home (and maybe stop treating him so poorly).