Mutt

Tag/delete messages older than...

The command to tag messages by pattern in mutt is T (shift+t) and the command to delete messages by pattern is D (shift+d).

If you just want to delete messages, you can use the D command, because it marks the messages that match the pattern you provide in the next step - the actual deletion happens only after the confirmation of the last step.

So first fire up the D command and mutt will open a prompt with a short explanation: "Delete messages matching:". As said before this step won't delete the matching messages, but mark them for deletion.
To delete all messages that are older than let's say 180 days enter the following pattern:

~d>180d

I have seen tutorials on the internet where the patterns have been written with spaces, but for me it just worked without spaces between them

Description

`~d`	So called simple pattern to messages with "date-sent" in date range
`>`	A comparison operator: "bigger than"
`180d`	180d(ays)

With tagging patterns work the same. After tagging messaged you can hit ; to apply a command to all tagged messages.

Absolute dates must be in the following format DD/MM/YY

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Mutt

Tag/delete messages older than...