Autoreply to Filtered Gmail Messages with Google Scripts

This Google Script, originally published by @rboyd, scans for lengthy emails in your Gmail mailbox (messages that have more than 100 words) and sends an auto-reply requesting the sender to resend the email after editing to less than 100 words. The long email is archived (moved away from the Inbox) after the auto-reply has been sent. You can set it up as a trigger to auto-run every 15 minutes.

Also see: Email Auto-responder for Gmail

// Credit: https://gist.github.com/rboyd/5027691

function deleteLongEmails() {
  var WORDLIMIT = 100;

  // Process only new emails in inbox that have not been read and receive in the last day
  var threads = GmailApp.search('to:me is:unread in:inbox newer_than:1d');

  for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
    // Ignore email conversations
    if (threads[i].getMessageCount() == 1) {
      var msg = threads[i].getMessages()[0];
      var word_count = msg.getPlainBody().split(' ').length;

      if (word_count > WORDLIMIT) {
        msg.reply('Your email is too long. Please resend after editing it to less than 100 words.');
        GmailApp.moveThreadToArchive(threads[i]);
      }
    }
  }
}
Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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