Personal Message Management

[Nachtmahr]

Uhm, I don't know where to put this exactly, but I figured that this would be the place to go to.

As it happens, my inbox is getting rather stuffed with messages, and I want to trim it, but I don't want to be ticking everything and going 1 page at a time. I want to use the 'Prune' option, but I was wondering - If I set it to delete anything older than 14 days, how can I make a folder or label or whatever for messages older than 14 days that I -don't- want to get deleted? And is this even possible?

Love
Nachtmahr. <3

[Nachtmahr]

I would like to clarify - I have read the tutorial for PM's, but I didn't find a solution to this issue.

The real question is: Is there any way to make sure an old message does not get deleted if I choose to prune?

[Sarena]

I double checked, and I don't think there's any way to keep it from deleting all messages, no matter what folder/label they are under.  You can change the number of days, but that does not really help in this situation.  I also looked at the Manage Rules tab at the bottom there, to see if there was a way you could set up a rule to delete older messages in one place without deleting all older messages, but there doesn't appear to be.

The only solution to it I can think of is to create a word document or something and copy the PMs that you want to keep there, and then prune everything. 

This would be a good thing to bring up in the New CMS: Feature Request thread, as I think a lot of people would find a pruning feature that allows you to only prune older messages and choose the label/folder that is to be pruned quite helpful.

Wish I could have been of more help!

[Nachtmahr]

Oh dear, guess I'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way then.

But thanks, really! It did help, at least I'm now aware of the request thread that you mentioned, and I'm going to work something fitting out just as soon as I've finished typing this. It would indeed be very nice with a more selective method for pruning. A way to get rid of all the 'Replied to our RP!' fillers, but keep the interesting/relevant stuff around. :)

Thanks a lot for taking some time to look at this though. ^.^

[Beguile's Mistress]

You can display personal messages as a conversation, one at a time or all at once.  I believe the second and third option put the messages in order chronologically.  Deleting PMs can be problematic so be very careful when trying this but if you have all of your messages listed separately you can click the select all box at the top and remove the checks from the ones you want to keep then delete the rest.  Or you can send the ones you want to keep to a label (folder) and delete the remaining messages by clicking the select all box at the top of the page.

[Nachtmahr]

That's the thing, I tried doing just that, and basicly add some PM's to a label, and then delete them in the inbox, but it got deleted in both places at once. :(

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but if it is, it doesn't seem to work. I don't know if you can make some kind of folder, and basicly move a PM from your inbox to a different folder/category/label, and then it will only be saved under that folder/category/label and no longer appear in your inbox, making it safe to go ahead and mass-delete there.

[Beguile's Mistress]

That is the way it works.  I have a lot of labels and clean out my Inbox my moving the PMs to the labels.  They then disappear from the Inbox but stay in the folder.

[Nachtmahr]

Didn't do that for me. :(

[Sarena]

Under the Preferences section, if you click on Change Settings, a list of options show up.  The last one is:

Remove the inbox label when applying another label.

Make sure there is a check mark in the box next to that and click "change settings" at the bottom right, just underneath that.  This way, when you move a PM to a label, it removes the inbox label, and then you can go through and delete what is in your inbox without deleting what you've sorted out for keeping. 

[Nachtmahr]

Oh.. Thanks a bunch, it does seem to work now. I'm however guessing that Pruning is still not an option, or can you prune -just- the inbox?

[Beguile's Mistress]

Go into Preferences then Change Settings and look at the bottom where it says:  Remove the inbox label when applying another label.  Put a check mark there.  It puts the message into the label and takes it out of the Inbox.

EDITED:  Ninja'd by Sarena!

[Sarena]

Oh.. Thanks a bunch, it does seem to work now. I'm however guessing that Pruning is still not an option, or can you prune -just- the inbox?

No, I don't think pruning would be an option.  I changed the number from 14 to 365, clicked delete, and it asked "are you sure you want to delete all your personal messages?" It's that word 'all' that makes me nervous.  Even with it being all messages older than 365 days, and I really don't know what I need all those older PMs for anyway, but the idea of confirming it just made my eye twitch.  So I really can't test it for you, lol, I might go into some kind of convulsion or something.