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How do you archive your Email or MBox2CHM?

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twinkler:
I do wish Thunderbird had a way of deleting attachments
-kronhead (December 25, 2007, 09:54 AM)
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"Beginning with version 1.5, Thunderbird allows you to detach or delete attachments from messages."
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Attachments_(Thunderbird)

J-Mac:
I am coming in a little late here, but I have to ask why you all don't just use Thunderbird's mailbox folders, or local folders? I move messages into folders by year. One advantage is that my desktop search tool (copernic) indexes and searches these, along with active email messages. I realize I am probably wasting space - but disk is cheap, and my time is what I want to save. One tool to search everything means a lot to me.

I do wish Thunderbird had a way of deleting attachments - just large ones that REALLY waste space. I used to use an extension for this, but I am not sure it still works.

Just my 2 cents ...

Dan
-kronhead (December 25, 2007, 09:54 AM)
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I don't see how placing messages into a Thunderbird mailbox folder archives them.  Unless you place them into a folder that is in a separate Profile; a Profile that you don't use to retrieve or work with your emails.  One created just for storage.  (Come to think of it, that's not a bad solution on the face of it!)

crono's (OP) initial post here asks how to archive the messages because Thunderbird is slowing down due to the size of his mail store.  If you just move them into a separate folder I would expect T-Bird to be just as slow as if you left them in your working folders.

Another altogether different thought is to store all of your messages in a Google Group.  I read about using a Google Group to keep a backup of your Gmail messages at Gina Trapani's LifeHacker - Geek to Live, but I don't see why that wouldn't also work for Thunderbird - or any other - email client.

Basically you create a Google Group, set the access to "Restricted", make yourself the only member of the Group, and then set Thunderbird as the "non-Google notification email system".  Then use filters to auto-forward or bounce a copy of every message that comes into T-Bird to the Google Group.  You could also forward all of your existing messages to the Group.  (That might take a while, but it would make it a really complete backup; a fully active backup that grows with each forwarded message).  You will have your own private Google Group that contains all of your Thunderbird email messages - a nice online backup!  If you are concerned that someone could still somehow hack into the Group and see your emails, encrypt them first.

The original article on LifeHacker where I saw the Gmail backup-to-Google-Group concept is here, and the actual instructions are here.

Jim

kronhead:
I don't see how placing messages into a Thunderbird mailbox folder archives them.  Unless you place them into a folder that is in a separate Profile; a Profile that you don't use to retrieve or work with your emails.  One created just for storage.  (Come to think of it, that's not a bad solution on the face of it!)

crono's (OP) initial post here asks how to archive the messages because Thunderbird is slowing down due to the size of his mail store.  If you just move them into a separate folder I would expect T-Bird to be just as slow as if you left them in your working folders.

-J-Mac (December 25, 2007, 12:14 PM)
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I'll agree that moving them around in Thunderbird is not a true archive - but I guess I had not experienced, or was not aware of, Tbird slowing down as the total # of messages it manages increases. Is it true beyond startup, and perhaps shutdown? (I probably only restart Tbird once or twice a week - and I find Firefox startup much slower and more frustrating.)

I probably have something less than 10,000 messages total in Tbird in different accounts (inbox, sent, and various "archive" folders) and another 5,000 in a variety of local folders. I should add that I recently switched to IMAP for active accounts, so I can access mail from 2 different laptops. I don't really like Web access. I still have the POP accounts defined, just for storage. Now, IMAP is certainly slower (obviously).

Thanks for the response.
Dan

J-Mac:
Hi Dan. I have about 15,000 messages in T-Bird, and it's not slow.

But I didn't claim it was; crono did at the top of the page. Maybe he/she has a lot more?

Jim

f0dder:
Humm, I'm considering moving my mails to an archive myself, and there's a couple of points I find very important:


* Either a documented storage format, or a way to output to MBOX. I don't want to be locked-in with a proprietary format. The app itself can be as proprietary and closed-source as it wants to, though.
* Has to have really good searching features, as that's obviously something you'll need for an email archive.
* Easy import from the major players and formats (at least MBOX (thunderbird etc.) and outlook/express.
* One Big File or at least just a few of them.
I'll look into the various offerings sometime soon, I guess... I really want to get the bulk of my mails moved to archive, and then start using IMAP instead of POP3. My host supports it, but I'm not going to trust anybody else to archive my mails.

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