[MlMt] Auto delete old messages that have a certain tag?

[Bill Cole]

On 7 Aug 2020, at 17:06, Roger Bohn via mailmate wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> I want to throw away certain old messages after a specified time. But 
> I want to use tags to set which messages get this treatment. In 
> process terms:
>
> * Message arrives, goes into an assigned mailbox.
> * I read it
> * I decide it should be kept until some condition or event happens, 
> then thrown away. For now, the event is “the message is more than a 
> month old.”
> * I set a tag “DELETE30” on the message.
> * The message remains in its regular mailbox.
> * After 30 days, the message is automatically deleted from the 
> mailbox.
>
> How can I do this?
> It’s easy to create a Smart Mailbox with messages that have tag 
> DELETE30 and “Date Is Not Within Last 30 days” , using Conditions. 
> But Conditions do not create actions, if I understand them. Rules 
> carry out actions, but rules are only executed when a message is 
> processed for other reasons.

Rules are applied to a message when the message is added to the mailbox. 
So, when a Date condition of a Smart Mailbox becomes true for a message, 
the Rules are applied to it.

I use this to "expire" messages that are part of public mailing lists 
like this one. I have a Smart Mailbox that includes all of the source 
mailboxes I use for mailing lists and a mailbox condition of Date not 
within the past 30 days, with a rule whose conditions exclude anything 
I've replied to or which has my domain in the References or In-Reply-To 
headers, with the action "Delete Permanently."

-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not For Hire (currently)