© 2004
Canonical Ltd.
•
Terms of use
•
Data privacy
•
Contact Launchpad Support
•
Blog
•
Careers
•
System status
•
513534c
demo site
(Get the code!)
I recently discovered this problem and wanted to share a workaround that preserves key parts of my preferred use model:
(1) I can press the Delete key on the keyboard, or the delete button in the GUI, to remove mail from my Inbox (or other folders), while preserving them in a folder (All Mail) where messages are not automatically deleted after 30 days.
(2) I can periodically purge old messages at a timeframe of my choosing, in a simple way.
I'm achieving (1) as follows:
In Thunderbird:
Account Settings->Server Settings->When I delete a message: "Remove it immediately"
"Remove it immediately", in the context of Gmail, doesn't have the same outcome as it might on other conventional IMAP servers. It does set the IMAP "Deleted" flag on the message, but in Gmail, all that effectively does is only remove it from the current folder. The message remains accessible in Gmail's "All Mail" folder.
In Gmail:
Settings->When I mark a message in IMAP as deleted: "Auto-Expunge on"
This just simplifies things for my use case by ensuring that Gmail's actions are immediately synced up with Thunderbird's actions.
References:
https:/
https:/
https:/
I'm achieving (2) with the following Google Apps Script:
https:/
This script automatically moves messages in "All Mail" older than 3 years into Gmail's Trash folder, where they will be then subject to Gmail's autodeletion policy. It excludes unread messages, Inbox messages, and messages that are in any of my user folders.
With Resources->Current project's triggers, I have set this to automatically run every month.