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Peter B

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Dec 14, 2008, 1:44:37 PM12/14/08
to Suggest a Labs feature
Hi Guys

Despite the huge amount of space available now to save emails, many of
us only want a mailbox with sufficient size to be effective and
managable. Often, I receive emails that I need to keep for a period of
time, and then they are no longer needed. At the moment, I try to go
back over past emails and delete those no longer required, or which
just fill up my mailbox. This can be a time-consuming and labourious
task.

Is there a process or setting in place whereby I can append a 'delete
at' date or period to an email, so it automatically deletes (ater a
prompt perhaps) at that date? This would significantly help email
management.

Checking the messages I can see there are quite a few ideas around
this topic.

Cheers

Peter B.

Older Bud Weiser

unread,
Dec 15, 2008, 12:35:39 PM12/15/08
to Suggest a Labs feature, Fred Calm
What you can do is apply labels such as "Expires-2009/1/1"
"Expires-2009/2/1". I used the same date syntax for Gmail's BEFORE:and
AFTER: search operators, but that's not the point. (But it was a hint
about how to exclude or include messages in a search according to
their date.)

There's no need for Gmail to add a feature if this requires manual
intervention on your part anyway to flag messages with expiration
dates. Except for automatic purging, how is some annotation for the
expiration better than a label? The label approach gives you a chance
to review messages before deleting them.

A more comprehensive solution would have some kind of EXPIRES header
created by the sender. Messages calling for a response with a deadline
have obvious expiration dates. Email clients might then be able to
automatically purge expired messages (move them to the Trash). Just as
soon as this becomes standard, i.e., included in a new version of
SMTP, Gmail should get on top of it. At present, there is no such
standard, and all an email client is required to do for an extended
header such as "X-Expires:" is parse the syntax. Any and every
behavior in response to seeing such a header is permitted, including
but not limited to ignoring it or handling the message as just
described.

In the meantime, until it's standard or there is at least an industry
consortium that specifies such email extensions, Gmail should not do
anything about them.

Peter B

unread,
Dec 16, 2008, 5:11:07 PM12/16/08
to Suggest a Labs feature
Hi

I understand the labelling option but what a work-up! Email
management should all be about simplicity. I'm suggesting a 'one mouse
click' approach to identfying an email for deletion at a later date.
Nothing more.
> > back over past emails anddeletethose no longer required, or which
> > just fill up my mailbox. This can be a time-consuming and labourious
> > task.
>
> > Is there a process or setting in place whereby I can append a 'delete
> > at' date or period to an email, so it automatically deletes (ater a
> > prompt perhaps) at that date? This would significantly help email
> > management.
>
> > Checking the messages I can see there are quite a few ideas around
> > this topic.
>
> > Cheers
>
> > Peter B.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

WatsonHo

unread,
Jan 7, 2009, 7:46:45 PM1/7/09
to Suggest a Labs feature
I completely agree with Peter B. This would be a wonderful feature and
I don't think it would be very complicated from a software point of
view. There are several things that you might want to hold on to, just
in case you need them, but after a certain point they become useless
-- Things like online coupons, friends' emergency contact information
when they're traveling abroad, Christmas gift lists and the like.

Right now, I keep those things, they clutter up my inbox and then I
end up having to read them all over again a month later to figure out
why I was keeping it and if I should just delete it.

I'm NOT interested in being able to set expiration dates for items I
send to other people. In fact, I'm very much opposed to that idea on
principle for reasons I won't get into here. I'm not trying to control
someone else's experience, just mine. That's why I don't think this
would be all that complicated -- because it would only take place
within the world of gmail.


On Dec 16 2008, 5:11 pm, Peter B wrote:
> Hi
>
> I understand the labelling option but what a work-up!  Email
> management should all be about simplicity. I'm suggesting a 'one mouse
> click' approach to identfying an email for deletion at a laterdate.
> Nothing more.
>
> On Dec 15, 5:35 pm, Older Bud Weiser wrote:
>
> > What you can do is apply labels such as "Expires-2009/1/1"
> > "Expires-2009/2/1". I used the samedatesyntax for Gmail's BEFORE:and
> > AFTER: search operators, but that's not the point. (But it was a hint
> > about how to exclude or include messages in a search according to
> > theirdate.)
>
> > There's no need for Gmail to add a feature if this requires manual
> > intervention on your part anyway to flag messages withexpiration
> > dates. Except for automatic purging, how is some annotation for the
> >expirationbetter than a label? The label approach gives you a chance
> > to review messages before deleting them.
>
> > A more comprehensive solution would have some kind of EXPIRES header
> > created by the sender. Messages calling for a response with a deadline
> > have obviousexpirationdates. Email clients might then be able to
> > automatically purge expired messages (move them to the Trash). Just as
> > soon as this becomes standard, i.e., included in a new version of
> > SMTP, Gmail should get on top of it. At present, there is no such
> > standard, and all an email client is required to do for an extended
> > header such as "X-Expires:" is parse the syntax. Any and every
> > behavior in response to seeing such a header is permitted, including
> > but not limited to ignoring it or handling the message as just
> > described.
>
> > In the meantime, until it's standard or there is at least an industry
> > consortium that specifies such email extensions, Gmail should not do
> > anything about them.
>
> > On Dec 14, 1:44 pm, Peter B wrote:
>
> > > Hi Guys
>
> > > Despite the huge amount of space available now to save emails, many of
> > > us only want a mailbox with sufficient size to be effective and
> > > managable. Often, I receive emails that I need to keep for a period of
> > > time, and then they are no longer needed. At the moment, I try to go
> > > back over past emails anddeletethose no longer required, or which
> > > just fill up my mailbox. This can be a time-consuming and labourious
> > > task.
>
> > > Is there a process or setting in place whereby I can append a 'delete
> > > at'dateor period to an email, so it automatically deletes (ater a
> > > prompt perhaps) at thatdate? This would significantly help email

Marc

unread,
Jun 18, 2013, 4:26:37 PM6/18/13
to gmail-labs-sugge...@googlegroups.com
Still not implemented, huh? I vote for an auto-purge feature as well.

I think it should be as easy as archiving with a button (or shortcut 'y' ;-) And by doing so the mail thread gets a 'to be purged in 4 weeks' label. A second feature would be the actual auto-purge feature in which you can configure for a specific filter or search criteria, for example a label 'to be purged in 4 weeks', all email is moved to trash.

This auto-purge feature filter could even be the 'inbox' label so in case an email is received and it is not added to any (other) label the email will be purged after the configured time. In this way your inbox is cleaned up automatically after some (to be configured) period in which you should have enough time to manage them or at least add a label to them in case it takes more time ;-)

Go GMail!

Cheers,
- Marc
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