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#### FAQ 6-5

#### Question 6.5

I want that all read messages are expired (at least in some groups). How to do it?

#### Answer

If you want all read messages to be expired (e.g., in mailing lists where there’s an online archive), you’ve got two choices: auto-expire and total-expire. Auto-expire means, that every article which has no marks set and is selected for reading is marked as expirable, Gnus hits ‘`E`’ for you every time you read a message. Total-expire follows a slightly different approach, here all article where the read mark is set are expirable.

To activate auto-expire, include auto-expire in the Group parameters for the group. (Hit ‘`G c`’ in summary buffer with point over the group to change group parameters). For total-expire add total-expire to the group-parameters.

Which method you choose is merely a matter of taste: Auto-expire is faster, but it doesn’t play together with Adaptive Scoring, so if you want to use this feature, you should use total-expire.

If you want a message to be excluded from expiration in a group where total or auto expire is active, set either tick (hit ‘`u`’) or dormant mark (hit ‘`u`’), when you use auto-expire, you can also set the read mark (hit ‘`d`’).