I want to move an email from my inbox to the trash folder, I do not want the email permanently deleted, I want it to go through the process of waiting 30 days in the trash to be permanently deleted. 1.Logged in: mail = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com') mail.login("example@gmail.com", "example") 2.Got the list of uids in my inbox: mail.select("inbox") result, data = mail.uid('search', None, "ALL") uidList = data[0].split() 3.Processed these emails: #processEmails returns the uids of the emails that I need #not really important for the purposes of this question newUidList = processEmails(uidList) 4.Delete the emails in the newUidList for uid in newUidList: mail.uid('STORE',uid, '+FLAGS', '(\\Deleted)') I thought that this line mail.uid('STORE',uid, '+FLAGS', '(\\Deleted)') would solve the problem (because that's what I found on the internet). But being here asking this question, you probably have correctly guessed that it did not. What was happening? When I executed this script, the emails disappeared from the inbox just as planned. But when I visit the trash folder, there is nothing there. So I thought maybe they were permanently deleted. But they were not. I noticed this when I saw that my email storage space is filling up quick which means my emails were still there somewhere. I go into the "All Emails" folder and there they are. So my question is... How do I get the result I want? Which is moving the emails to the trash folder by their UIDs. Why is it not doing what I thought it would do? I am asking for an explanation for this line mail.uid('STORE',uid, '+FLAGS', '(\\Deleted)') And most importantly... Thank you for your input Continue reading...