Why Azure Queue messages live for less than a few seconds?

Question

On Azure (or from VS) the dialog for creating new messages inside a queue says the message expires in 7 days, yet it is gone in less than a few seconds. Why? (I created a continuous running WebJob as described in this article)

Answer 1

The message disapear because it has been consummed by your Web job. The retention delay means you have X days to consume the message (in your case, 7 days). After the delay expired, the message is automatically deleted.

If you want multiple consumer for your messages, instead of a queue, you can use Service Bus with subscription or topics, or Event Hub with consumer groups.

Answer 2

The messages stay in the Service Bus Queue or Topic subscription until they are processed i.e received in receive and delete mode by the receiver.

The message will not be removed from the queue if it is received in peek lock mode.

In your case as the message is processed by the webjob it was not available in the queue.

The messages also have default time to live property which can be set after which the message will be moved to the dead letter path of the same messaging entity(queue or topic subscription).The messages after the given time duration in time to live after scheduled enwueued time utc will be moved to the dead letter path with dead letter reason TTLExpiration