My goal is to make sure that all incoming Gmail messages from [email protected] are immediately permanently deleted.

I have created a filter that gives new messages from this address the label "deleteforever". Next, I have made a Google script that completely deletes all messages with the label "deleteforever". To be certain that no other messages are deleted, I check an extra time whether the messages really are from [email protected]. In this way, when a thread contains messages from [email protected] and messages from another address, only the messages from [email protected] should be deleted.

I plan to run it every minute. I have 3 questions:

1. Does this algorithm always completely delete all new messages from [email protected]?
2. Does this algorithm never delete a message from another sender?
3. Will this not cost too much runtime, assuming that [email protected] does not send many emails? (I saw that there is a limit of 1 hour per day.)

function extractEmailAddress(header) {
  return header.match(/[^@<\s] @[^@\s>] /)[0];
}

function deleteForever() {
  var threads, msgs, label1, label2, sender,message,messageId;
  label1="[email protected]";
  label2="[email protected]";

  threads= GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("deleteforever").getThreads();
  msgs = GmailApp.getMessagesForThreads(threads);
  for (var i = 0 ; i < msgs.length; i  ) {
    for (var j = 0; j < msgs[i].length; j  ) {
      message=msgs[i][j];
      sender = extractEmailAddress(message.getFrom());
      if (sender==label1 || sender==label2){
         messageId=message.getId();
         Gmail.Users.Messages.remove("me", messageId);
      }
    }
  }
}

UPDATE

Inspired by the comment of @TheMaster, the following strategy solves the potential runtime problem:

-modify the filter in Gmail so that messages from [email protected] skip the inbox.

-hide the "deleteforever" folder

Now the script can be run every 5 minutes or with even lower frequency.

CodePudding user response：

Since you are open to muting the notifications as suggested by TheMaster and running the script/function on a less frequent basis, I suggest you improve it further by using Gmail API, specifically batchDelete to improve the performance.

Script:

function deleteForever() {
  label_name = 'deleteforever';
  sender1 = '[email protected]';
  sender2 = '[email protected]';
  
  // get labelId of label_name
  var labelId = Gmail.Users.Labels.list("me").labels.filter(label => label.name == label_name)[0].id;
  // filter messages where it has labelId and from either sender1 or sender2
  var messages = Gmail.Users.Messages.list("me", {
    "labelIds": labelId, 
    "q": `{from: ${sender1} from: ${sender2}}`
  }).messages;
  // if messages is not empty
  if(messages){
    // get ids of the messages
    var ids = messages.map(message => message.id);
    // bulk delete the messages
    Gmail.Users.Messages.batchDelete({"ids": ids}, "me");
  }
}

This will delete the accumulated message IDs by bulk where it meets the conditions:

• Sender is either sender1 or sender2
• Has label label_name.

Note:

• You will not need extractEmailAddress anymore.