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What is the currently best Desktop Search software?
tomos:
How are HTML emails and attachments stored in Thunderbird? How can you archive off older email to stop folders becoming unmanageable - are there tools built in to do it?-Carol Haynes (October 31, 2007, 07:58 AM)
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good questions.
I was coincidentally just this morning figuring out how to (bulk) delete attachments from sent mail
came across this
Technical details
Thunderbird stores the whole e-mail together, including the attachment, in MIME format in the mailbox files in your Profile folder - Thunderbird. It does not un-encode and store the attachment outside the mailbox file unless you save or detach it as described above. By contrast, the Eudora e-mail program automatically un-encodes and detaches the attachment when you receive the e-mail; it always stores attachments as separate files.External links
* AutoZip Attachments extension
* Attachment Extractor extension
* Copy Attachments to Clipboard extension
* Slideshow extensionre archiving I'm curious!
EDIT: kindof overlapped with Ralphs post there
Ralf Maximus:
Oh, and I forgot to mention: Thunderbird does not bother me with silly "Are you sure you want to open this incredibly dangerous attachment?" prompts.
:-)
f0dder:
Calling ThunderBird fast is wrong, imho - it has the same bloaty-slow startup feeling that FireFox has (I bet it's the whole XUL interface deal), and moving large amounts of messages between folders is slow - because of the retarded all-text MBOX format used.
Luckily, ThunderBird does do binary indexing of the mbox files, otherwise it would be unusable. The downside to this is that in the case TB decides to act all weird about your mbox files, you have to let it re-index them... which took ~15 minutes for a ~1.5gigabyte mbox file on a mid-end P4 system.
Don't get me wrong, I love the clean and easy TB interface, the filtering rules are strong enough, and the built-in anti-spam is also efficient enough, but it does weird things every now and then.
And the interface is pretty clean, I've moved four (more or less computer-illiterate) people from Outlook Express over to TB, and it works well for them - apart from those occasional hiccups.
PS: importing Outlook Express mailbox files into TB is fast, but importing contacts takes ages.
Carol Haynes:
The main problem (which is why I think I rejected it last time) is the lack of export options. The help pages make some suggestions (such as installing Netscape and moving all your mail to Netscape and then to Outlook Express - which is cumbersome to say the least) and there are a couple of commercial apps that can archive stuff - but there don't seem to be any addins to archive or move mail out of Thunderbird (the KB suggests one but the page pointed to is a dead link and searching extensions for the name yields nothing useful).
Ralf Maximus:
Calling ThunderBird fast is wrong, imho - it has the same bloaty-slow startup feeling that FireFox has (I bet it's the whole XUL interface deal), and moving large amounts of messages between folders is slow - because of the retarded all-text MBOX format used.
-f0dder (October 31, 2007, 10:47 AM)
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Yeah, I should have qualified that. STARTING ThunderBird takes the same amount of disk thrashing as any other app (Outlook springs to mind) especially if you have a bunch of TB add-ins installed, as I do.
But once it's running it's quite snappy. Even when background stuff is running, like filters or PopFile. I have four email accounts set up, two of which are GMail and HotMail, and even they query/download quickly.
I haven't noticed any lag when moving messages from folder to folder. It takes 2-3 seconds to move a coupla hundred emails from Junk to Trash, for instance. But I would think that's acceptable, given the amount of work.
The main problem (which is why I think I rejected it last time) is the lack of export options.
-Carol Haynes (October 31, 2007, 10:55 AM)
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I found this page describing how to export from TB to Outlook Express, then from OE to Outlook. I also found some add-ins that automate the process, but they prove "incompatible" with my ragged-edge version of Firefox+TB.
True, it's cumbersome to export from TB-->OE-->Outlook, but that would be a one-time fall-back option if you decided TB sucks, right?
BTW, the Lightning scheduling add-in is quite nice, and makes me (almost) forget about Outlook. But if you prefer a more robust scheduling option, there exist add-ins to support Rainlander(sp?) and other dedicated apps.
FWIW I am not a rabid TB fan, just happy that I've got direct access to my email via text editor if things go kaboom. At one time I wanted to write something that would parse email, and Outlook kept getting in the way. Once my .PST files started to unravel that was the impetus to jump ship.
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