How to clear queued email messages so they don't send

Question

While moving from M1 to M2 a number of sales-related emails are generated and stack up in the queue. I don't want these messages to be sent to customers regarding "old" orders. How can I clear out the email queue without the cron job sending them?

I've googled around, looked in SE, and even unsuccessfully hit up Magento support and can't find a way to do this...

The closest I've found is this: Magento2.2.2 Order email confirmation after switched back on sends old order confirmation email but at some point, I need to turn async. sending back on, so I'm right back in the same place...or am I misunderstanding it?

Answer 1

Magento 2 does not "queue" up emails as much as mark orders for which emails need to be sent, or not sent.

Instead of a distinct database table to "queue up" outgoing email messages, etc. the data points send_email and email_sent are included with the sales_order table and are used to queue and maintain status for email notifications.

To process the "email queue" Magento sends off emails to entities where the email_sent value is null. Finding and changing these records to indicate that they've already sent their emails will prevent them from being sent.

This is more fully explained here: How does asynchronous email sending works in Magento 2.