System and method for deleting related messages

• US 20050144561A1
• Filed: 12/29/2003
• Published: 06/30/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 12/29/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Rohall, Steven L., Gruen, Daniel M., Moody, Paul B., Kerr, Bernard J.
• Granted Patent: US 7,818,680 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/739
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]

Abstract

A system and method is provided which utilizes a threading service to offer enhanced features for a document management system including an email system. Various enhanced email features may be provided through one or more of the following components: a delete module, a reply module, a profile module, and a search module. The delete module enables a user to delete a selected message, a set of related messages, or the whole set except for the selected message. The reply module enables a user to send a reply message to all addresses associated and involved with an entire set of related messages. The profile module enables a dynamic interest profile to contain all relevant information from an outgoing message and a set of messages related to the outgoing message. The search module enables search results to include documents which match the user'"'"'s query as well as documents related to the documents which match the user'"'"'s query.

Claims

1. A method for deleting documents comprising:

in response to a user selecting a document from a list of documents, determining one or more related documents that are related to the selected document; and

in response to the user selecting a delete option, automatically deleting the one or more related documents.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said automatically deleting comprises automatically deleting the one or more related documents and the selected document.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the documents include messages.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the documents include email messages.

5. A graphical user interface comprising:

a list of documents including at least one document selectable by a user;

a delete command that, upon selection by the user, deletes one or more documents related to the selected document.

6. The graphical user interface of claim 5, wherein said delete command further deletes the selected document.

7. The graphical user interface of claim 5, further comprising:

means for selecting at least one of the documents from the list of documents.

8. A system for deleting documents comprising:

a graphical user interface that presents a list of documents and one or more delete options to a user, wherein the user selects a document and selects one of the one or more delete options through the graphical user interface, wherein the graphical user interface includes one or more views; and

a delete module, responsive to the selected delete option, that automatically deletes a document related to the selected document, wherein the related document is otherwise not selected by the user.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the delete module further automatically deletes the selected document.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the delete options include an option to delete all related documents except for the selected document.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the delete option include an option to delete all documents in a thread except for the selected document.

12. The system of claim 9, wherein the delete options include an option to delete all related documents.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the delete options include an option to delete all related in a thread.

14. The system of claim 8, wherein the one or more delete options include an option to delete only the selected document.

15. The system of claim 8, wherein the list of documents comprises a list of messages.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the delete options include an option to delete all related messages except for the selected message.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the delete options include an option to delete all messages in a thread.