Attempting to delete multiple email messages in folder outside of inbox with Python and Exchangelib

Question

I'm trying to delete all email messages in a folder outside of my account.inbox with Python 3 and exchangelib.

testFolder = account.root / 'Top of Information Store' / 'Test'    
emails = testFolder.all().order_by('-datetime_received')
for email in emails:
    email.delete()
    # FWIW
    #print(email.subject)
    #email.move(to_another_folder)
    #both work fine.

The above only prints all emails and their properties

I have also tried:

items=[]
testFolder = account.root / 'Top of Information Store' / 'Test'    
emails = testFolder.all().order_by('-datetime_received')
for email in emails:
    items.append(Message(folder=testFolder))
items.save()
items.delete()

The above hangs and gives a memory error:

File "C:\Python36-32\lib\site-packages\exchangelib\services.py", line 89, in _
get_elements
    response = self._get_response_xml(payload=payload)
  File "C:\Python36-32\lib\site-packages\exchangelib\services.py", line 171, in
_get_response_xml
    res = self._get_soap_payload(response=r, **parse_opts)
  File "C:\Python36-32\lib\site-packages\exchangelib\services.py", line 260, in
_get_soap_payload
    root = to_xml(response.iter_content())
  File "C:\Python36-32\lib\site-packages\exchangelib\util.py", line 365, in to_x
ml
    return parse(stream, parser=forgiving_parser)
  File "C:\Python36-32\lib\site-packages\defusedxml\lxml.py", line 134, in parse
  elementtree = _etree.parse(source, parser, base_url=base_url)
  File "src\lxml\etree.pyx", line 3424, in lxml.etree.parse
  File "src\lxml\parser.pxi", line 1857, in lxml.etree._parseDocument
  File "C:\Python36-32\lib\site-packages\exchangelib\util.py", line 340, in getv
alue
    res = b''.join(self._bytes_generator)
MemoryError

I'm not sure what else I should try, especially since the former works to move and print emails just fine.

Answer 1

There's no need to collect the items first. This will consume a lot of memory, as you found out. Instead, you can call .delete() directly on the QuerySet. This will fetch only the item IDs and delete them in batches.

There is also an .empty() method which results in a call to the EmptyFolder service. This will delete all items in the folder without even fetching the IDs:

testFolder.all().delete()
# Or even faster:
testFolder.empty()

Answer 2

Maybe instead of delete try move to trash? or soft delete?