Marking Groups
If you want to perform some command on several groups, and they appear subsequently in the group buffer, you would normally just give a numerical prefix to the command. Most group commands will then do your bidding on those groups.
However, if the groups are not in sequential order, you can still perform a command on several groups. You simply mark the groups first with the process mark and then execute the command.
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M m
Toggle the process mark for the current group (gnus-group-mark-group).
If gnus-process-mark-toggle is nil, set the process mark for the current group.
M-#
M u
Remove the process mark, if any, from the current group (gnus-group-unmark-group).
M U
Remove the process mark from all groups (gnus-group-unmark-all-groups).
M w
Mark groups in region (gnus-group-mark-region).
M b
Mark all groups in the buffer (gnus-group-mark-buffer).
M r
Mark all groups that match some regular expression (gnus-group-mark-regexp).
Also see Process/Prefix.
If you want to execute some command on all groups that have been marked with the process mark, you can use the M-& (gnus-group-universal-argument) command. It will prompt you for the command to be executed.