Delete newsgroup messages in Entourage?

G

Greg Bryant

I've ended up with a lot of old messages in my newsgroups and want to delete
those outdated ones. However, there seems to be no delete option in
Entourage.

I've also tried setting a rule to not show something over a certain number
of days, but no luck there.

Any suggestions?
 
B

Barry Wainwright [MVP]

I've ended up with a lot of old messages in my newsgroups and want to delete
those outdated ones. However, there seems to be no delete option in
Entourage.

I've also tried setting a rule to not show something over a certain number
of days, but no luck there.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

You can't 'delete' messages in newsgroups because they are hosted on
servers. You can 'kill' them (make them not display) by setting up a rule
like this: <http://homepage.mac.com/barryw/temp/EntourageSS001.gif>

Make sure the rule is created under the 'news' pane and note that the
'enabled' box is unchecked (or all messages in all newsgroups would
disappear as soon as they arrived!)

To use the rule, select the news messages you want to hide and choose this
rules from the 'Apply Rule' item in the message menu.
 
G

Greg Bryant

I tried that, with the only change being "If date sent is greater than 20
days old."

I still have to manually choose messages and apply the rule. I would have
thought this setting would hide messages automatically.

Any suggestions?
 
B

Barry Wainwright [MVP]

No, the rules only operate as the messages arrive - they can't automatically
act retrospectively.
 
G

Greg Bryant

Then how many READ messages will appear on the screen, and how long will
they remain?
 
B

Barry Wainwright [MVP]

That depends on the newsgroup and news server. Messages will be deleted from
entourage as they expire from the server. For this group and my server,
there are about 3,500 messages, going back over a little more than 3 months.
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

But they only appear "on the screen" if you have downloaded all of them. By
default, Entourage only downloads up to 300 (headers) at a time, and you
won't have any earlier than your first download unless you keep pressing the
"More" button. You can also alter the number to download at a time in
Tools/Accounts/News/Microsoft News Server/Options. Again, by default,
Entourage only downloads the headers until you click on a message, although
you can create a rule to download entire messages.

When older messages are eventually removed from the server, connecting for
new messages (clicking on the newsgroup) also removes them from your cache.
(If there are any news messages you want to preserve for posterity, drag
them to make copies to a local mail folder.) On the other hand, if you're
really short of disk space (I can't see any other reason to do this), you
can periodically click on the Microsoft News Server icon and click Empty
Cache to remove all messages from _all_ your subscribed newsgroups on that
server from the cache, then Compact your database (hold down Option key at
launch and choose Compact). Really, it's simpler just to let things be.

If you don't want to see all those old read news messages, simply choose
View/Unread Only in each newsgroup. That's what I do. If ever I need to
check an older message in the thread, I toggle Read messages On via
shift-command-O. I Arrange my newsgroups (and mailing list folders) by
Subject - or rather by a Custom Arrangement for Subject sorted in Sent order
- precisely so that when I toggle Read messages On, the older messages are
immediately above (or below) in the same grouping, and when viewing Unread
Only as I do normally I can quickly read through the recent messages in the
thread before seeing if I should reply myself.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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