On 01-01-2024 13:53, David Van Edwards wrote:

!. I have just tried deleting Sent messages and when I put the search string 1:200 in only one message was deleted. And when I put in 1:500 again only one message was deleted. In both cases a green message box came up saying the operation was successful.

2. I successfully deleted 1000 messages from my Inbox using the search string 1:1000 but it was not clear to me that this would delete the 1000 most RECENT emails, not as I imagined the FIRST 1000 emails counting from the beginning. Is that the case? It certainly seems to have been the result and it’s rather upsetting.

Should your documentation make it clear whether 1:1000 is counting forwards or backwards?

Hi David,

Dovecot is a server application, it doesn't display a 'green message box' or something like that. This is probably your mail client acknowledging that it did what you asked from it. That might not necessarily be the same as you expected it to do: I've never seen a mail client that allows you to send an IMAP DELETE command with a 1:200 range from the GUI.

Maybe you should describe in detail:

• What mail client you are using to perform tests, and how you executed them.
• On which documentation you based your search strings.
• What version of Dovecot you are using, and maybe the output of 'doveconf-n'
• What Dovecot logged when you performed your tests.

When logging is unclear or sparse, maybe enable mail_debug before you start the test to get more detail. See https://doc.dovecot.org/admin_manual/debugging/mail_debugging/

Probably I don't know the answer to your questions, but giving explicit information might help others to help you :)

Kind regards, Tom