How to setup auto-expire?

How to setup auto-expire?

[Sharon Kimble]

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My "system" directory has 4511 emails in, with only a few saved with
"!" and the rest being showing as "O". Is there anyway in which I
can auto-expire them without manually going through each one and
marking them as "E" please?

Thanks
Sharon.
-- 
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
my git repo = https://bitbucket.org/boudiccas/dots
TGmeds = http://www.tgmeds.org.uk
Debian testing, fluxbox 1.3.5, emacs 24.3.91.1

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Re: How to setup auto-expire?

[Andreas Schwab]

Sharon Kimble <boudiccas@skimble.plus.com> writes:

> My "system" directory has 4511 emails in, with only a few saved with
> "!" and the rest being showing as "O". Is there anyway in which I
> can auto-expire them without manually going through each one and
> marking them as "E" please?

You could configure the group as total-expire.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: How to setup auto-expire?

[Mike Kupfer]

Sharon Kimble wrote:

> My "system" directory has 4511 emails in, with only a few saved with
> "!" and the rest being showing as "O". Is there anyway in which I
> can auto-expire them without manually going through each one and
> marking them as "E" please?

Here's a brute-force method:

"/ m O RET" so that you just see the "O" messages.  Then go to the top
of the buffer and do "C-u 5000 E" to mark everything as "E".

mike

Re: How to setup auto-expire?

[Andreas Schwab]

Mike Kupfer <m.kupfer@acm.org> writes:

> "/ m O RET" so that you just see the "O" messages.  Then go to the top
> of the buffer and do "C-u 5000 E" to mark everything as "E".

M P b (gnus-uu-mark-buffer) M-& (gnus-summary-universal-argument) E

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: How to setup auto-expire?

[Sharon Kimble]

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Mike Kupfer <m.kupfer@acm.org> writes:

> Sharon Kimble wrote:
>
>> My "system" directory has 4511 emails in, with only a few saved with
>> "!" and the rest being showing as "O". Is there anyway in which I
>> can auto-expire them without manually going through each one and
>> marking them as "E" please?
>
> Here's a brute-force method:
>
> "/ m O RET" so that you just see the "O" messages.  Then go to the top
> of the buffer and do "C-u 5000 E" to mark everything as "E".
>
> mike
>
Thank you very much for this Mike, its worked very well in slimming
down some of my over-large mail directories. Muchos gracias :)

Sharon.
-- 
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
my git repo = https://bitbucket.org/boudiccas/dots
TGmeds = http://www.tgmeds.org.uk
Debian testing, fluxbox 1.3.5, emacs 24.3.91.1

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Re: How to setup auto-expire?

[Sharon Kimble]

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Sharon Kimble <boudiccas@skimble.plus.com> writes:

> Mike Kupfer <m.kupfer@acm.org> writes:
>
>> Sharon Kimble wrote:
>>
>>> My "system" directory has 4511 emails in, with only a few saved with
>>> "!" and the rest being showing as "O". Is there anyway in which I
>>> can auto-expire them without manually going through each one and
>>> marking them as "E" please?
>>
>> Here's a brute-force method:
>>
>> "/ m O RET" so that you just see the "O" messages.  Then go to the top
>> of the buffer and do "C-u 5000 E" to mark everything as "E".
>>
>> mike
>>
> Thank you very much for this Mike, its worked very well in slimming
> down some of my over-large mail directories. Muchos gracias :)
>
> Sharon.

I have just discovered that somehow a whole slew of emails in one
group have been converted to "E" and all the "!" have been lost!
This is drastic as it is one of my sources for a book that I'm
writing. Is there any way of reversing the process and getting them
back, or should I restore from backup? And if I do restore from
backup, how do I get the "!" back again please, or, in other words,
what file retains the details of "!" ?

Thanks
Sharon.
-- 
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
my git repo = https://bitbucket.org/boudiccas/dots
TGmeds = http://www.tgmeds.org.uk
Debian testing, fluxbox 1.3.5, emacs 24.3.91.1

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Re: How to setup auto-expire?

[Mike Kupfer]

Sharon Kimble wrote:

> I have just discovered that somehow a whole slew of emails in one
> group have been converted to "E" and all the "!" have been lost!
> This is drastic as it is one of my sources for a book that I'm
> writing. Is there any way of reversing the process and getting them
> back, or should I restore from backup? 

Ouch.  I don't know how that would have happened, since the "/ m O"
should have hidden the ticked ("!") messages, which would prevent them
from getting the "E" mark.

If you can still see the messages after doing "/ o", they're not lost,
they're just marked to be removed eventually.  You can simply re-tick
them.  If you can no longer see them, it does look like you'll need to
restore from backup.

> And if I do restore from
> backup, how do I get the "!" back again please, or, in other words,
> what file retains the details of "!" ?

Well, the details of which messages have which marks are kept in
$HOME/.newsrc.eld.  But I would be very cautious about hand-editing that
file, as it would be easy to mess something up.  Instead, I would
restore to a folder with a different name, then move or copy the
messages that you need into the right folder, then tick those messages.

Maybe I should mention that I use the nnmh back-end with Gnus.  I assume
that other back-ends will behave the same, but I've never tested that.

mike