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Feature request: set expiry date

#1354

Hi! I would find it useful to define an expiry date for a message. If the date is reached the message is automatically deleted. Or do I have a chance to achieve something similar with builtin functions?

Cheers

Reported by Thorsten Huhn · December 16th, 2015 @ 08:55 PM

State: new
Milestone: none
Assigned to: benny benny

Activity

  1. fnurl
    fnurl

    I think that you could set up a rule (that lives in a Smart Mailbox) that moves email older than X days to a specific mailbox (such as Deleted Messages). This would not be on a per email basis though.

    If you use tags, you could have one tag that you use to mark messages you want to "delete 1 week after they have arrived". Then one for "delete after 1 month" etc. Then create a Smart Mailbox for that gathers all messages tagged with "delete after 1 week" and set the rule for that Smart Mailbox to something like "if the date is not within the last 1 week, move it to the mailbox Deleted Messages".

    December 17th, 2015 @ 05:52 PM

  2. Thorsten Huhn
    Thorsten Huhn

    My concrete use case is a pretty huge amount of emails containing discount offers which end on a specific date. I tend to keep those mails because I might need the coupon code later. In the end I have to read the emails again just to notice that the offer has ended and I finally delete the mail manually.
    Following your tips I will create tags for deletion in 1, 2, 3 and 4 weeks as most offers expire in this time. This should work pretty much as expected even being less explanatory than the concrete deletion date.

    December 17th, 2015 @ 08:42 PM

  3. benny
    benny
    • State changed from new to closed

    There is a caveat. Date-based conditions in rules are not (currently) triggered. This is because rules are only checked when emails are “added” to the mailbox. The workaround is to create a smart mailbox with the rule condition and then have a rule which only has the action. This way the email is “added” to the mailbox when the date condition is true -- which the triggers the rule.

    I hope that makes sense.

    I guess what you really need it something like a “snooze” feature (which is often requested), but instead of the email returning to the Inbox you want it to be deleted. I'll keep that in mind.

    December 18th, 2015 @ 01:28 PM

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