How to delete emails older than 2 days through python and IMAP?

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I have a script that would download the google takeout backup export of a particular folder/label, once that part is done, the next step is to execute the delete script. Because I do the takeout process, it takes 2-3 days to create the back up before I can download it, cause the email backup is quite large. So during that 2-3 days while I wait for the backup to be ready to download, I'll be getting emails and those won't be in the backup export that I've requested.

So I want my script to just delete emails 2-3 days from today's date. Below is my code and I know the section I need to filter/search is in " typ, data = mail.search(None, 'ALL') " However, I'm unsure where to exactly filter this and tell it to only flag/select emails that are 2-3 days old and sent to trash. Any help?

def deleteEmailIMAP(user, password, IMAP):
        mail = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(IMAP)
        mail.login(user, password)
        print("Logging into account:", email )
        mail.select("Process") #select folder/label
        print("Process Folder Selected")
        time.sleep(2)
        typ, data = mail.search(None, 'ALL')
        print(" Emails from Process Folder sent to Trash")
        for num in data[0].split():
            mail.store(num, '+X-GM-LABELS', r'(\Trash)') #sent to trash and removed from folder
        mail.expunge()
        print("Sent to Trash.")
        print("Emptying Trash & Expunge...")
        mail.select('[Gmail]/Trash')  # select all trash
        mail.store("1:*", '+FLAGS', '\\Deleted')  #Flag all Trash as Deleted
        mail.expunge()  # not need if auto-expunge enabled
        print("Done. Closing connection & logging out.")
        time.sleep(2)
        mail.close()
        mail.logout()
        exit()
    deleteEmailIMAP(email, passw, imapserver)
imap gmail python
2 Answers

This is the key line from your code:

typ, data = mail.search(None, 'ALL')

You can change the ALL to e.g. BEFORE "12-Oct-2020", because you don't actually want to search for all mail. See pages 49-54 and page 84 of the specification for details and other possible search keys.

As an aside, I am quite amazed by how many questions here contain code to search for all mail.

user_8577270 
import datetime
from imap_tools import MailBox, A

with MailBox('imap.mail.com').login('test@mail.com', 'password', 'INBOX') as mailbox:
    # delete messages older than 2 days from current (INBOX) folder
    mailbox.delete(mailbox.uids(A(date_lt=datetime.date.today() - datetime.timedelta(days=2))))

https://github.com/ikvk/imap_tools

user_11532900
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