Gmail inbox suddenly full of pages of ads

I clicked on something at the top of the gmail inbox that said social, and indicated that it allowed me to receive messages from social networks. Didn't want it, or the other damn thing beside so clicked on them and suddenly my inbox doubled in size with pages of ads. Hours later inspite of my best efforts it is still like that. I have had that account for years, it has important messages. How can I return my inbox back to legit messages? Failing that how can I download 'sent folder" to my machine. google seems to have gotten worse than facebook about tricking you into giving up info and getting ads.
Very sleazy.

alterintell

 

Laura,
It seemed to be saying to clic if I didn't want it Anyway, none of those classifications are still there. There is nothing there to clic or not clic on. And today was the only time they have ever been on there, but they are gone now. The ads were not in my inbox before today.
alterintel

 

Laura, I followed your instructions and primary was already checked but I checked it again and clicked save. Nothing changed. The ads are from pc mag, something called 'what's new', some other things. The top part of my inbox still doesn't have the divisions 'primary' and 'social'.

 

Laura,
Those tabs weren't there till today. I just clicked on all of them in the configure box, and that seemed to organize everything into its own category and restored the person to person communications that I wanted. Now I do have all those tabs on top, which I never had that before Having had this mail service for years, its possible it just didn't update properly when the program changed; as I said, today was the first time I knew any of this existed.
thanks for your input. Could you possibly help me get my bookmarks out of 'library' and back under 'bookmarks'? Its my other post today. [This is what happens when you're older and self taught, such as it is. lol]
Alterintel