Finally figured out how to do this, here’s information;
STEP 1: Go into “Design” > choose “Edit HTML / CSS” then choose the template “account.html.” You can remove the following three codes from the HTML. Don’t worry, if you don’t like the way it looks you can always revert back to the default original HTML. (Remove ONLY these codes and NOTHING else).
%%Panel.SideAccountMenu%%
%%LNG_ViewMessages%%
%%LNG_ViewMessagesDescription%%
STEP 2: (optional) *IMPORTANT – If you really want to keep that “Manage Your Account” side panel (%%Panel.SideAccountMenu%%) but you just want to get rid of the other “View Messages” section inside of it, then simply open that panel in the same HTML / CSS editor. It is called “Panels/SideAccountMenu.html.” Then remove only the following two codes and nothing else. Remember, if you don’t like the changes you can always revert back to the default by clicking “revert to original.”
%%LNG_ViewMessages%%
%%GLOBAL_NumNewMessages%%
STEP 3 (VERY IMPORTANT): Customers who have previous open tickets will still see a link in their old emails where they can access the message center directly. You can remove the message system completely by editing: “account_inbox.html” and removing only this one single code:
%%Panel.AccountInbox%%
NOTE: This step disables the whole account inbox message system from the customer’s end. Steps 1 and 2 only hide the message system links from the site (but NOT from past emails). If you ONLY want to do step 3 you can, but then customers will still see the message center links and when they click these message center links NO message center will appear.
So, theoretically, you can just do step 3 but it may confuse customers without step 1 and 2 hiding the links. I suggest following all 3 steps!