I have Mac mail set to communicate using IMAP to a Gmail account.

How can I set Mac mail to delete the entire email thread rather than deleting one message at a time?

Is this possible with any other mail setup? I've never heard of deleting an entire thread of messages using IMAP on Mail.app

Have you tried collapsing the thread and dragging it to the Gmail->Trash folder?

Not sure if you can do it automatically or not, but I can tell you how I would do it with thunderbird.

t-bird has a search box, where you can select the search criteria. The search criteria defaults to Subject or Sender, which is usually sufficient. You can copy and paste the subject into the search box, and that limits the display to only those messages that meet the search criteria. Make sure the right messages are there (and only those messages you want to delete), then select all in the right window, and press the Delete button.

I know that's probably not exactly what you were asking, but I don't know of any automatic way to do what you want. Also, this method works no matter what type of email server you are using.

-David

In the View menu on click on organize by thread. Then you can click the top most of the thread to delete all the messages. It may not be exactly the same thread as you would see in Gmail as I think it is more a proprietary thing to the browser/mail client, though it is nice to quickly clear up conversations.

organize by thread is perfect for deleting messages.

thanks