How do I delete old emails in cPanel?

If your mailbox is full or you want to clean up older emails, you can do this easily using the Email Disk Usage tool in cPanel.

Steps to delete old emails:

Log in to cPanel
See: How do I log into cPanel?

Navigate to "Email Disk Usage"
In the Email section, click on Email Disk Usage.

Select the email account
Use the dropdown at the top to choose the account.

Find the folder to manage
For example: INBOX, Sent, Trash, or any other folder.

Click "Manage" next to the folder
This will open the cleanup options.

Click the "Messages to delete" dropdown and choose one of the following options:

1 year old or more – Deletes emails older than one year
30 MB in size or more – Deletes large messages
Previously viewed – Deletes emails marked as read
All messages – Deletes everything in the folder
Custom query … – Use a search filter (see examples below)

Click "Delete Permanently"

Confirm the deletion. This action cannot be undone.

Make sure you’ve backed up any important emails before deleting them.

Custom query examples

When using the Custom query option, you can enter search filters in Dovecot’s query format.

Examples:

before 01-Jan-2025 – Deletes emails from before 1 January 2025
larger 10M – Deletes emails larger than 10 MB
savedbefore 104weeks – Deletes emails saved more than 2 years ago
savedbefore 26weeks – Deletes emails saved more than 6 months ago
savedbefore 2weeks – Deletes emails saved more than 2 weeks ago

Format/Tips:

We recommend using the "before" filter with a specific date to remove older emails more accurately.
Valid time units include: weeks, days and hours.
Dates must be formatted as DD-MMM-YYYY (e.g. 01-Jan-2025).

If you need help with these steps, contact our support team or email helpdesk@elitehost.co.za.

Updated on: 14/04/2025