depthdeluxe / imap_dedup

Simple CLI to deduplicate IMAP messages

IMAP Dedup

This script is intended to be used to deduplicate messages on an IMAP server that follows a Gmail-like structure.

For example, all messages are stored in the "All Mail" folder but mail with labels attached to it will show up in additional IMAP folders. This script can purge elements in an "All Mail" folder that have already been labeled.

Emails are removed in a multi-step process, caching some information locally in a SQLite database to speed up operations.

Commands

The following commands should be run in the order documented in this table.

Command	Description
pull	Pulls messages from IMAP server and loads in database
find-duplicates	Scans the database for duplicates and marks them
print-duplicates	Prints all duplicates along with message subject for allow hand spot-checking of data
deduplicate	Performs deduplication operation on IMAP server using duplicates found by find-duplicates. WARNING: This will delete messages on the server, ensure you have double-checked that the script is removing the right information

Required Arguments

Before starting, you need to gather your IMAP credentials and determine the "All Mail" folder to deduplicate from

Field	Description
hostname	Hostname of the IMAP server to connect to
username	Username of the account in IMAP server to log into
password	Password for the account in IMAP server to log into
all-mail	The "All Mail" folder to remove messages from if duplicates found