Archiving - how does it work?

Hi all,

I wanted to delete all the messages I have in a system, so I configured everything, file_path for archiving, which interfaces (all), retention periods, etc. When I ran the archiving job, nothing happened.

Then I looked into saphelp and saw the following:

"...you must decide which messages are to be archived before the first message is processed.".

This means I should have done all the customizing before the first message was sent through XI?

Well, I didn't, so what is the solution now? How can I delete de 50.000 messages I have in the database? Is it still possible with the archiving/deleting jobs? Or should I delete some specific tables, and which ones?

Thanks in advance,

Miguel