Archive old Mail Accounts???

Does anyone know if you can archive an old Mail Account? Previously, I learned the hard way that Mac Mail doesn't like you to delete accounts. However, I don't want to have Mail constantly go out and check for mail on an account that no longer exists.
If moving the mail in my inbox from that account to a folder in the "On My Mac" section of Mail will archive the old messages, but not allow Mail to delete them when I remove the account, then that's a home run. I just don't want to zap 2 years of mail (again...)
Thanks in advance.
M
Message was edited by: What the......

What the...... wrote:
Does anyone know if you can archive an old Mail Account? Previously, I learned the hard way that Mac Mail doesn't like you to delete accounts. However, I don't want to have Mail constantly go out and check for mail on an account that no longer exists.
If moving the mail in my inbox from that account to a folder in the "On My Mac" section of Mail will archive the old messages, but not allow Mail to delete them when I remove the account, then that's a home run.
that's the way to do it. make a local mailbox in "on my mac" section and copy those messages there. you can then safely delete the original account. this will not affect anything in "on my mac" section.
I just don't want to zap 2 years of mail (again...)
Thanks in advance.
M
Message was edited by: What the......

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Archiving old mail messages

I am trying to archive old mail messages so they do not cram up my inbox. In the past I have successfully created a new mailbox for old messages, given it a month and year, and dragged messages across – but I can no longer do this.
When I try to drag a message across, I get the message 'Error: the message "xxx" could not be moved to the mailbox "xxx" - On My Mac". Can anyone help me out?
Not being able to archive old messages means that I have hundreds of already read messages in the inbox which causes, I think, another problem. Every time I open the mail program and click on an unread message, I am told that "The message has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it". When I quit the mail program and go back in, the problem sorts itself, but this happens every time I check the mail and it is becoming quite frustrating!
Happy New Year to you all!
Regards, Mike
iMac Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Does the same occur when using the Move To or Copy To command instead of dragging messages manually?
Every time I open the mail program and click on an unread message,
I am told that "The message has not been downloaded from the server.
You need to take this account online in order to download it".
This indicates an "overstuffed" mailbox issue which means the mailbox has approached or exceeded 1 GB in size (which is the recommended mailbox size limit for Jaguar and Panther Mail) or has some corruption.
An "overstuffed" mailbox issue can occur at any mailbox size but is more likely to occur as a mailbox approaches or exceeds 1 GB in size for Jaguar or Panther Mail.
Although your OS detail provided indicates you are running 10.3.9, you posted in the Mail & Address Book - Tiger discussions so I'm assuming you are running 10.3.9 and not Tiger.
Quit the Mail.app first and using the Finder go to Home > Library > Mail > this POP account named folder (named by the user name and incoming mail server for the account) > INBOX.mbox.
Move the INBOX.mbox to the Desktop.
When relaunching Mail, a new INBOX.mbox will be created automatically by Mail within the account named folder. This will allow the Mail.app to function properly again and not risk losing any existing messages or new messages downloaded by the account while working on the old INBOX.mbox moved to the Desktop to recover the existing messages.
Control-click on the old INBOX.mbox moved to the Desktop and at the menu window that appears, select Show Package Contents.
Post back here listing the package content file names and size of each.

How can I get my old mail account back?

I f&%€ up and deleted my old mail account after I had added my new one ( I've changed ISP). So all old mails disappeared.
Is it possible to restore them my self? Or do I have to go to the Mac doctor?
I'm greatful for all help

Hi John and thank you.
I use Mail.
I deleted the settings for the old account by mistake - I just thought I wouldn't need it anymore after having set up the new one - and suddenly the inbox was empty. A not so nice surprise
However I managed to find a folder named Mail with a POP - folder in it, in the trash can, which I dragged to my desktop. But I haven't been able to import it.
I found some useful earlier threads and intructions from some David Gimeno, so I removed the .mbox extension from the INBOX.mbox file.
BUT still, Mail won't import. It says it doesn't find any valid mbox files.
The INBOX.mbox is about 12 Mb, so I recconed there would be something in it.
/Ellem

How do I easily access archived old Mail?

I have over 5000 emails in my Mail Inbox folders, over 9000 in my Sent folders. I am worried that at some point it will be too many and the Mail storage system would become corrupted. I would like to archive out the older emails, but still have easy access to them.
The instructions for archiving mail is to archive entire folders. I could move old email to a like named mailbox and then archive all the old ones together. I would have to reimport them to look at them though. Back to square 1 and a mess to redo just to see one old email.
Sooo. If a created a user account with a different login, could I import that old mail archive into that user account's mail and have it available with a simple relogin? Would the old email find it's way via some hidden id number back into the original Mail program? That is, would the two instances of Mail be completely independent even if the emails had the same originating instance?
Also, is there a way to have two users logged into one computer without losing performance?

It doesn't matter what folder it is in, all the mail is in Mail. How many mails can Mail track before it loses it's cohesion and starts dropping them? All DB software has it's limits, and this is Mail (free) in 10.6, not Oracle. There's a reason Mail has a rebuild mailbox command. Look it up and it will tell you to run it when messages disappear. With about 20000 emails I am concerned. I would also just like to reduce the number of results I have when searching without loosing access to old emails because I may need them.
This is for a business and the volume of new email increases every year as processes go from local and paper to remote and electronic. I do not want to switch to Windows.
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Deleting old Mail accounts

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Marc, I have the same question; I hope you don't mind if I seek clarification. So sitspotsit, let me see if I understand you correctly. I have moved all of my messages from my inbox into folders and subfolders under the "On My Mac" heading in mail. If I now delete the account to which these emails were sent, the messages will vanish from the folders (I guess they are technically called mailboxes)? Also, I have archived these mailboxes, and have them stored in my documents folder (not the mail app). Deleting the account shouldn't delete my archived messages, should it? Thanks.

How do I access my "old Mail" account in my AOL mail folder?

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Get old Mail-Accounts

Hello,
i had the problem that my user-database crashed.
With the help of an apple supporter i can use my old user-account and have all files back, now.
There is only one problem. If i start Mail.app I have to create a new Account and can't use the old Accounts that are already in ~/Library/Mail.
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Tobe,
Your objective is to have EVERY xxxx.mbox folder contain only the file Info.plist, and the folder Messages -- these are the only files needed by Mail 2.0 to be in each mailbox.
In the one INBOX.mbox you provided data for, it would seem that if the old holder of message content, the "mbox" file is only 56 KB, and the Messages folder is 31.2 MB, then you could safely delete all files in this INBOX.mbox EXCEPT Info.plist and the folder named Messages. Messages contains the actual message content. The other files are detrimental to Mail accessing this mailbox.
You could do this for every xxxx.mbox folder within the Mail folder, and your ability to access would return. The issue would be if you found the "mbox" file in any xxxx.mbox folder to be larger than the Messages folder in size -- this would be there could be messages you had while running Panther, that did not get placed in the Messages folder. This was the comparison I suggested you make of every mailbox.
Quit Mail. Let me suggest that in the Finder you Duplicate the Mail folder, and drag the resulting copy to the Desktop for backup. In the original Mail folder, open every mailbox, whether in each account folder, or any in the Mailboxes folder, and simply delete every file within, EXCEPT Info.plist and Messages. Also in the Mail folder locate the Envelope Index file, and delete it.
Start Mail again, and allow it to continue when it says it is ready to import all your mailboxes -- this is only referring to those in the Mail folder already, and will actually be re-indexing them, and creating a new Envelope Index file.
Many people have successfully done this exercise, and I am sure you can too. However, if any doubt, continue to ask questions. Once all your mailboxes are again displaying messages, you can decide if you think any messages have been lost, and therefore might found in the backup copy of the Mail folder, now on your Desktop, and we can talk about how to do that.
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Several months ago I changed from comcast to gmail. This morning Mail some how found the old comcast information and will not use gmail. I have gone into prefs and deleted all (that I could find) references to Comcast. Still when I try to send I get a window asking for my Comcast password. Where could that old info be hideing so I can delete it? Or other ideas?
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Archiving old mail - as mail is running very slow

Can someone please give me some guidance as to how to archive my older emails in Mail? I have to keep a copy of everything but some of my inbox's have 20,000+ emails in them and this is making Mail run very slow. I would love to be able to select for example a date criteria and export or archive everything prior to that date. Any ideas? Also, am i right in assuming this will make Mail run faster for me? The slowness occurs usually when switching between mail boxes within the application. Thanks in advance, John

Hi David,
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Are there any other diagnostics i should run?
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Error
+An error in the system has occurred. Please contact the system administrator if the problem persists.+
+Useful links :+
+* Forum Home -- browse the forums here.+
+* Search Forums -- visit the search page to query all forum content.+
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Thanks in advance
J.

How do you archive old Mail messages?

Perhaps I'm a bit obsessive, but I've saved every email message I've sent or received since 1996 (except 30 that were lost -- and I know where they went.) It's occasionally useful, but its slowing down Mail. Time to offload ten years' worth into an archive.
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Archiving and accessing old mail

As I have upgraded Macs over the years I have always taken my full Mail with me each time.    I just got a new MacBook Retina 15" and am about to go through the migration process, but my mail database goes back to 2004 (when I switched from Entourage) and has about 50,000 messages in it, so I think it might be time to start over with a clean slate.    I would still like occasional access to my old mail, however.
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Old outgoing mail account still visible?

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Archive old Mail Accounts???

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