Trying to create a rule to delete emails on server that are older then 360 days.

POP accounts do not access the server, only the downloaded messages. Are these your concern, or the ones on the server?

I know it doesn't sync like Imap setups due.

But pop accounts has the following option (image attached) to delete on pop servers but isn't working for me.

What I think may be the issue is I am confusing Thunderbird. It would delete the email IF the email existed on the local server. Since it has already been deleted in the local drive it has nothing to initially find and compare to delete on the server.

BTW...I can't use the retention policy because according to what I read online it ALSO deletes the emails on the local server.

I am not sure I am following. Just to clarify, there is the server and there is the PC. There is no 'local' server. That is where I am getting confused. Thanks. :)

So yes...

To Keep it simple....lets just apply the goal to a gmail account.

I would like to somehow automate the ability to delete emails on the host servers as soon as they are year old.

BTW thank you for the help

My understanding is that POP has access to the server only while downloading the new mail. You cannot access messages from a prior period. Here is an example of using the 'remove from POP server' that shows its use: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1225215 In that example, the user has set to retain messages on server for 14 days, but wants to immediately delete junk messages. That filter option achieves that. To achieve what you want, you could set up a second account in IMAP and see if you can achieve your goal that way.

That was my fear.

IMAP wont work either because the reason I use pop is to keep the email on the server in case of accidental removal.

I have just found that POP gives me the most protection. I just know after one year if I haven't needed the email by then I will unlikely need it.

guess I need to look for a 3rd party app or another program to this for me.

Thunderbird has been amazing and I wont move to anything else but its filters and sorting is a bit limited.

Remember: the issues for IMAP and POP are not specific to Thunderbird; that's how they work. I wish you well. :)

I understand. I just remember when I was using outlook or emClient one of them had a filter of deleting emails off the server that were over a year.

Was just hoping thunderbird had something similar so don't need to manually do this.

Appreciate your input.

I guess we should leave this unsolved in case someone finds or creates a solution.

Don't know the rules so I am good either way.

Filters act on the message being downloaded, just as Gmails own native filters do. Google workspace has tools to manage old mail, the free product not so much (like at all)

Check what is happening at this link before you do anything. Googles default setting are not often correct for special use cases. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/fwdandpop

Then I suggest you review some of these add-ons, as you appear to be using Firefox, they allow the bulk managing of gmail based on a number of cleaning criteria, including age. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=gmail%20cleaner

What I think may be the issue is I am confusing Thunderbird. It would delete the email IF the email existed on the local server. Since it has already been deleted in the local drive it has nothing to initially find and compare to delete on the server.

If by local server you mean Thunderbird's message store on you hard disk, then you are correct. What actually happens when the leave on server setting is selected is a reference to the server stores email location? is stored locally on the hard disk in a file called popstate.dat so it is actually a mess if you look at it from a technical point of view and best avoided. Certainly not "relied" upon. I have seem loads of instances over the years of an entire email history for an account being re-downloaded because of an update to server side software changing the internal reference to the email That Thunderbird has stored.

I think you will do reasonably well with the browser extensions, although you might need to run them once or twice a year to kick off the cleanup. They represent a significant improvement on the difficult to impossible process Google impose in the hope of selling you a workspace account.

I have seem loads of instances over the years of an entire email history for an account being re-downloaded because of an update to server side software changing the internal reference to the email That Thunderbird has stored.

This is EXATLY why I am trying to clear the history in an automated way. I manage 104 emails accounts and had the complete email history downloaded over and over when something changed on the server side. Next thing I know I have to sort through thousanda and thousands of emails and duplicate finder would not work in most cases because the email ID changed. I realized that I need a solution so this NEVER happens again.

I think you will do reasonably well with the browser extensions, although you might need to run them once or twice a year to kick off the cleanup. They represent a significant improvement on the difficult to impossible process Google impose in the hope of selling you a workspace account.

I will look into the browser extensions but any ideas for emails stored on a hosts server?