Archiving/Backing up messages in Mail

I know that so long as you save pref files and mail boxes etc one can be confident the data is saved and accessible. The problem with this is that if you wish to search for some email in the "archive" it means reverting Mail.app to that point in time when the back-up was made. It rather messes up the "up-to-date" set-up of Mail!
I would like to have a way of storing my emails for posterity in a form I can access without having to disturb Mail. My best solution so far is iData2 which will import Mail's emails and store them in a data base. Works quite well actually but its sorting can't handle threading etc.
Ideally I want an app that can look at Mail's mbox folders and handle them, sort, display etc just like Mail does. I want to be able to say "open zxzx.mbox" and look/read/search the emails contained in zxzx.mbox.
I also would feel better if the format used is pretty basic/simple so that software in ten years time wont have trouble accessing the data!
Any suggestions?
(There has to be a way! do folk not want to keep their mail even if its years old?)

David G.G.
well like "most of you" that is exactly what I do, to organise my emails.
Kevin Horn,
Thanks for the suggestions but I use POP email, not dot mac (or similar). To check and read email I download all emails from my ISP mail server. My email is stored on my computer not a remote server.
I am an active member of an email based forum which results in large quantities of mail over time, and as I work from home my work emails mount up very quickly. I currently try and keep about 2 months worth of mail in my active mail boxes (as in, the ones that email downloads to), transferring older stuff to "archive email" type mail boxes from time to time. having too much mail in the Inbox results in Mail "slow-downs". keeping a couple of years worth of mail, even when sorted out into separate mail boxes results in very sluggish searches and can be frustrating when just searching for a recent email last week. (yes I know I could filter by date etc)
I would like to store older emails either on cd/dvd or external drive (or both),
(and backing up data is, as you know, vital) but be able to access those emails without having to mess-up Mail.
We all know how quickly our hard disks get full and my 80GB internal drive needs some free space. I don't see the point of storing such stuff permanently on my "working drive". Some of my Mail dates back 6 years or more and all in all is now occupying quite a few GB of disk space - even more than my pics in iPhoto!
So as I said I'd like to back up my mail to some disk, but still be able to access it in a Mail.app like manner if I need to. I just don't want to have to bring it all back into the Library folder etc. and mess up the current state of Mail.
I'm wondering if there is something I can do with aliases... make an alias of an Mbox from a DVD and place in the appropriate place in Library->mail folder. Launch Mail and access the mail box. once done, delete that mail box. Its not ideal though and a bit of a faff, even if this would work.
Any other suggestions or comments?

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How to archive a message in mail app and delete in imap gmail

I've been searching the forums before asking this but have failed to find the answer.
I'd like to, if possible, use the archive function in my mail app on iMac to archive and store messages locally. At the same time I'd like to delete those messages from the Gmail servers so that my archived messages only sit on my iMac.
I've tried but Gmail creates an [IMAP]/Archive folder with the messages that I've archived on my mac.
Is this possible?
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Thankyou
Yes, I tried that already and it successfully stores the email locally, "On my Mac", however, the email remains within Gmail's All mail folder and is therefore not removed from Google's servers.
Is it possible to achieve this without having to go into Gmail and separately deleting the mail from All mail?
Would like to avoid the duplication if possible.
Thanks

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when trying to delete a message in mail, i would prefer to advance to the next message. i delete a message and the curser goes back to an earlier message. i usually delete the most recent messages first.

First of all, you've posted in the Snow Leopard forum, but your profile says you're running Leopard, not Snow Leopard. What version of Mac OS X are you really running? You should always be sure that your profile matches the forum you're posting in, otherwise the "solution" to your problem may be totally ineffective.
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Archiving messages in Mail

The volume of messages I have in mail are getting quite large and I wonder is there a way to put them on an external HD that I can get mail to read when I want to see those files. If this is possible I can then delete the messages within Mail and free up some HD space. If this is possible to address such backed up mail what is the procedure for reading backed up file on an external HD. Oh by the way, where are these files stored and what is their name.
Thank you

Thanks I will check it out. I use WIndows at work and I can make pts files then back these up. After which I can delete messages that are not current. If I want to see those files again I can just get Outlook to address them. My HD is getting maxed out, I have a back-up HD but the files on my computer HD are all used a lot. Just wondered If I could squeeze extra space by thinning down Mail files. Best Regards

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Having deleted some Mail messages by mistake, I have had to recover them from TM. I can tell you that the recovery of mail messages will be done at the mailbox level. In my case it was half of the messages in a mailbox. So I recovered the complete mailbox from TM. Then I copied the messages from the recovered mailbox back into the mailbox I use in Mail. I hope that helps.
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Allan

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Hi lsgmilano, and a warm welcome to the forums if you han't been already!
First I'd backup your whole Mail folder, by right clicking on it in the Finder, then choose Archive/Compress.
Right click on that Mail folder, choose archive, you'll get everything in the folder, and the folder itself in a file called Mail.zip..
Quit Mail, then In your home folder, try moving this +folder & file+ to the Desktop then reboot...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail
Move to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index

How do I manage old messages in Mail on my Mac?

Hi,
I can no longer receive Yahoo messages in Mail on my Mac.
This could be because I have over 20,000 messages in my Inbox?
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Select the bottom or top e-mail, then hold down the shift key and select the last e-mail, the Mail/Message/Archive.

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Just in case my previous topic subject was preventing some folks from checking this out, I'lll try to ask my question in a more generic way.
I have an archive of a mailbox from another email program that I'm trying to move over to Apple Mail. My archive is saved as a .csv file. I can open the file in either Numbers, Excel, or TextEdit, and I can see that all the info is there. However, I want to be able to import these into Mail so that I can integrate these old messages with my other emails. I would want to be able to search for these messages using Mail's search tools and be able to identify messages based on who they're from, the subject line, date received, etc.
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Restoring backed-up messages

Hello,
I have a folder of backed-up .emlx messages, all of which have the Mail.app icon (looks like a postage stamp). But when I try to import that folder back into my Mail application, I get the error message that no Mac OS X Mail files were found. What am I doing wrong, and how do I get those messages back into Mail?
Thanks,
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I am trying to get messages from a local backup of my imap-account to show up in Mail and to get uploaded to the mail server.
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Kind regards.

Have you seen this...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mail/2.0/en/ml1136.html

I have just started using Time Machine. I was thinking about deleting old E-Mails on my Mac to clean. Does Time Machine back up the E-Mails , if so how can I find them in Time Machine ??

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If you back up your mac before deleting your emails, Time Machine should back up your e-mails.
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EDIT: Just browsed and CT above was right. This topic might help you:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/20154303#20154303

Archiving/Backing up messages in Mail

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