Here is an idea:
Set up a POP3 client email program like Thunderbird.
Then let the client do all the work downloading and removing mail from 
the server.
If you want to leave mail on there, like the last 30 days, make sure you 
set that in the client before connecting and downloading.

On 2/16/2012 2:09 PM, David Camm wrote:
> we have a customer who apparently never deletes anything in his inbox. 
> the domain admin called me this morning when the user couldn't get to 
> his inbox using webmail (not surgemail) - resource limit reached.
>
> user had just under 7000 messages in his inbox.
>
> admin started deleting messages through the web admin interface.
>
> he called me a few minutes ago and said initially, he was able to 
> delete 100+ messages at a time, but all of a sudden, no matter how 
> many he selected, only one message was deleted.
>
> i logged in to surgemail admin and verified this by trying it myself.
>
> i selected twelve messages, the response was 12 messages deleted, 
> however the total message count only went down by one, and the twelve 
> messages were still being displayed.
>
> we're running 5.2a-1 on opensuse 11.0
>
> disk space is not a probem. /var/spool/mail is 896G, only 8% used.
>
> anyone have any ideas?
>
> david camm
> advanced web systems
> keller, tx
>
>