How to setup auto-expire?

[Sharon Kimble]

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.

[Andreas Schwab]

Post by Sharon Kimble
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.

[Mike Kupfer]

Post by Sharon Kimble
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

[Andreas Schwab]

Post by Mike Kupfer
"/ 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.

[Sharon Kimble]

Post by Mike Kupfer

Post by Sharon Kimble
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?

"/ 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.

[Sharon Kimble]

Post by Sharon Kimble

Post by Mike Kupfer

Post by Sharon Kimble
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?

"/ 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.

[Mike Kupfer]

Post by Sharon Kimble
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.

Post by Sharon Kimble
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