Removing old messages from server - safe or not safe?

[Lucas.Sichardt]

Hello all together,

I am wondeirng if the option to remove older messages from the server is safe or not safe.
What I mean is, that there’s a warning doming up, that you should not use this option if you are using another e-mail application on the same server/account.

Otherwise the warning also tells that 0 messages would be deleted right now even though I should have some older messages in my e-mail account on the server.
The warning also says that all (old) messages in all server folders will be removed.

So - what’s really going on when I activate that feature? Does the Delta Chat remove all old messages from the server or only the ones in the Delta Chat folder?

I think the last variant would be very good, becaus otherwise the server will be filled with totally old messages after some time…

Perhaps somebody has some information on that for me.

Best regards,

Lucas

[link2xt]

Delta Chat will remove messages that you see in Delta Chat. By default it means only the Delta Chat messages and replies, but if you enable reception of classic emails, Delta Chat will download and display them, then remove from the server.

[Lucas.Sichardt]

Ah, thank you! I understand.
And I also understand the warning better now…

[ian]

Let me link all issues to a single place which are related to message deletion on the server (some of the threads may also contain outdated information):

Messages are not delete on the imap server

No, it’s not a problem, the messages should be deleted eventually when phone is on and connection becomes available. Check several days later that you don’t have extremely old messages, like from 2 days ago or something like this.

Delete messages on the server and make automatic backup from deltachat

This is already how it works, if you delete messages on the server the client keeps it. Delta Chat downloads every message at most once, after that it does not matter if it exists on the server.

Ability to automaticly delete attachments after some time to save provider space

Related/enhancement to Expected behavior The additional idea here is the ability to set vanishing time for attachments (6M, 1Y, etc) so you will save a lot of space in you email postbox. additionally we have so more granulated control like: set the message size to delete (greater then) choosing the type of attachment to delete (file, audio, media) of cause setting the past time (6M, 1Y, etc) … Actual behavior delete ALL messages automatically after some time or delete a message manually

Multi-device support for delete messages from server

First idea: Message deleting on demand At the Moment on chatmail servers you can choose delete message automatically or after download. Especially if you receive many messages then your inbox gets very quickly full, so I asked me if it would be possible to implement something like delete messages on demand so if you inbox is like 80% it deletes older messages to make some space on the server even if they are not that old. Second idea: Multi-device delete on download As alternative I thought abo…

Remove images from server upon download

for chatmail, meanwhile heavy messages are deleted sooner for the exact same reason, to not allow storage exceeding, see delete big messages after 7 days by adbenitez · Pull Request #504 · chatmail/relay · GitHub - while that can probably be done even smarter, and ideas as resending are discussed also internally, this simple line already caught the vast majority of inboxes getting too full

Mail account full: Move and keep old messages on another device?

You can simply delete old message from IMAP server. Delta Chat does not read messages from the server more than once, it treats inbox as a feed rather than storage.

Delete messages from IMAP server and device after user-configurable time (#1310)