Archiving Mail

Does anyone know if there's a way to decrease the bulk in your mailbox without deleting? I have like 10 GB of mail and the application just runs so slowly. Same goes for iPhoto. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Halli

How often (if ever) do you want to access it?
You can use something like MailSteward to create a searchable archive (through that application).
Personally, I created a folder called 2005 which was all emails prior to Jan 1 2006 and then went to my ~/Library/Mail folder in Finder and zipped the 2005 folder, then deleted the unzipped version. So I have a Zipped archive for LONG time storage that I can unzip if I ever know I need an email that I had from a long long time ago.

Similar Messages

How can I "archive" mails in Mail App to another internal drive/partition to save space but still have it searchable in spotlight (and preferably visible, searchable, draggable in Mail App)?

How can I "archive" mails in Mail App to another internal drive/partition to save space but still have it searchable in spotlight (and preferably visible, searchable, draggable in Mail App)?
Background:
I am using Mountain Lion and Mail App and running out of space on my small primary SSD drive (where I keep OS, apps, key user preferences/data and mail for speed). The mail data is the big variable (many GBs) and I want to "archive"/move some of the old mail to my 2nd drive inside the Mac. But I still want it searchable inside spotlight and preferably even inside Mail too. And I'd like to be able to still drag and drop old mails into this archive folder.
What I've tried that seems to work:
This seemed to work:
1. Move the archive folder/mailbox to the 2nd drive/partition/folder (don't delete anything inside Mail App)
2. Create a symbolic link from its new location to the original/old location
This seems to work, it looks as "normal" and as if nothing happened inside Mail App but the folder now resides elsewhere and seems searchable etc. But I'm not sure that once caches refresh or over time with updates etc if stuff will break horribly or corrupt.
Is that the right way to "archive" mails in Mail App to another internal drive/partition to save space but still have it searchable in spotlight and visible, searchable, draggable in Mail App?
Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
Daniel

I'm having a similar but slightly different problem. My company just migrated to Gmail, and it's saving mail drafts every 30 seconds into my Trash folder.
I unchecked the "Show in IMAP" preference in the Gmail settings, but my Drafts folder completely disappeared. I went back and checked it and the folder reappeared (with my drafts still in there).
I like the idea if starting an email on my laptop and having the option of finishing it on my iPhone or iPad, so only saving Drafts locally would not be ideal.

How do I add an archive Mail folder

The help file on organizing mail tells me to go to the mailbox screen and hit Edit. There is no edit button on that screen. I want to add a folder to save or archive mail messages as a local file, not take up room on the server.

Tap the back arrow that saysMailboxes until there is no back arrow just a title saying Mailboxes. You should see two sections under it, one that says Inboxes and another one that says Accounts. Under the Accounts you should see a list of your mail accounts (if you have more than one), select the account you want to add the folder to and it will take you to the lists of folders for that account. Inbox, Drafts, Trash... At the top you will see the Edit button that will allow you to add a folder.

How do I restore my archived mail folders after downloading Yosemite

After downloading Yosemite, all my archived mail folders have disappeared - can someone please help me, I really need to get this information back?

Do you have a backup?
Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then Mail/V2/Mailboxes

Outlook 2013 Won't Display My Archived Mail PST Files

Hi there,
I have recently upgraded to Outlook 2013 from 2010. I have archived mail in PST files going back many years. I managed to open the first one I tried (Outlook 2003 archive) but noticed it wouldn't display sent items on a common search. I then clicked on the
name bar to sort by name and it did do it. Later when I went back in it wouldn't display any sent items; it just has the "thinking" dots moving at the top. I left it for 3 hours but nothing. I then closed the archive and moved the PST file to my
C drive and tried again; nothing. I opened another PST file but still nothing shows.
Does anyone know what could be causing this? I'm thinking of going back to Outlook 2010 but would rather get 2013 to work properly.
Regards
Ross
Ross Bevin

Hi Ross,
From the description, the problem is that the archive.pst file you created in Outlook 2003 doesn't display anything when opened in Outlook 2013, right? If I've misunderstood something, would you please provide a screenshot so that we can understand this
issue more clearly?
What's the file size of the PST file? It may cause unexpected problem if the file size exceed the limit. See:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982577
In addition, we can try to use the Inbox Repair Tool to scan and repair the PST file to check if it helps:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/outlook-help/repair-outlook-data-files-pst-and-ost-HA102749454.aspx?CTT=1
Please let me know the result.
Regards,
Steve Fan
Forum Support
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How to read old (archived) mail?

Hi -
As the subject indicates, I'm not sure what the best way is to read old archived mail....
Old mail was saved before I updated to Tiger, and don't know if that makes a difference.
Obviously I want to avoid overwriting any current messages, but would also like to know how to pull archived messages and keep them with my current messages, if possible.
Thanks,
Andrew

If these archives were saved with Jaguar or Panther Mail, it does make a difference since the mbox format used with Tiger Mail is significantly different than the format used with previous Mail.app versions.
You can use the Import Mailboxes feature. Imported mailboxes are placed within an Import named folder kept separate from existing Tiger Mail mailboxes and messages.

Help locating archived mail!

I archived some old mail that I wanted to save but now I cannot locate it. I watched some tutorials but the archive folder shown in the left panel of mail doesn't exist for me. Where is my archived mail? I am running Lion.

I actually found it myself. Way down at the bottom of the left mail panel, there are some ghost/grayed-out mailbox names. (gmail, etc). If you hover on the right of the bar, the word "show" will appear. click this and the archived mail for each account will appear.

Mail archival and status of the archived mail

I use IMAP to talk to microsoft exchange server. When the server complained that the mailbox was full, I decided to archive the mail and delete it from server. Then I imported the archived mail. But to my surprise ALL of my mails in that archive are showing up as "unread". I had about 100 or so unread emails when they were in the server, but I have now lost the knowledge of which ones, because everything is showing up as unread.
Am I doing some thing wrong in the archival process? Why isn't Mail.app preserving the [un]read status of the mails during archival process?
Thanks
Siva

this is the default behavior. Mail archives messages in mbox format that is used by many mail clients. this is just a plain text file containing the raw source of the messages. read status is not contained in that file. hence when mail imports an archive like this it has to treat all messages as new.

PLEASE HELP ME. Some important emails have gone to an archive mail box and i really need them. Can someone please help me with how to view the archive email box and the emails that are in there?

PLEASE HELP ME. Some important emails have gone to an archive mail box and i really need them. Can someone please help me with how to view the archive email box and the emails that are in there?

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_deleted_mail_accounts

Archive mail from Gmail

I have purchased a new mac and in setting up mail my gmail account is constantly fetching archive mail from the server. 25000 messages. I have searched and searched but can't find a way to stop it or change my archive settings. In the mean time because it's constantly looking for emails I have gone through my months worth of data in 2 days! Any advice please?

Same here; right clicking and choosing "move to" is also an option, gives you more choiche.
Updating Apple products used to be without much problems, but since Mavericks it seems that every update create a new problem!

How do I export or archive Mail mailboxes?

I used to be able to archive Mail email boxes and they'd have the name of the mail box and would be clearly an archive = I just tried to do so [running Lion] and what comes up is "com.apple.Mail.Backup" = with the icon of the 'old' Apple Backup program. So, if I go to export [archive, backup or whatever] Mailbox 1 and then go to 2, then it won't have the right name and might get overwritten.
What do I do??? I need to archive or back up a whole bunch of emails and am concerned about losing them etc.

I don't know what was happening but yesterday I went back and did the Export/Archive function and it ended up doing just as I expected, exporting the mailbox as an mbox format =finally!!! Not sure why it went haywire but all is fine now.

Using AppleScript to auto-archive mail in Outlook 2011

I want to use AppleScript to set up a schedule to auto-archive mail greater than X days old. What I've found so far is below, and the error I'm receiving is "error "Microsoft Outlook got an error: Can’t get pop account \"TargetProcess\"." number -1728 from pop account "TargetProcess"".
# the time we want to archive from
set theArchiveCutoffTime to ((current date) - (32 * days))
property theCount : 0
tell application "System Events"
set targetProcess to count (every application process whose name is "Mail")
end tell
tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
set thisAccount to pop account "TargetProcess"
set thisFolders to mail folder of thisAccount
# find the "Inbox" of topFolder and "Mail ARCHIVE" of on my computer
repeat with thisFolder in thisFolders
if name of thisFolder is "Inbox" then
set theInbox to thisFolder
else if name of thisFolder is "Mail ARCHIVE" then
set theARCHIVE to thisFolder
end if
end repeat
# find the archive "Inbox"
repeat with thisFolder in mail folder of theARCHIVE
if name of thisFolder is "Inbox" then
set theArchiveInbox to thisFolder
end if
end repeat
set theArchiveTarget to theArchiveInbox
# archive the Inbox
repeat with theMessage in message in theInbox
if time received of theMessage < theArchiveCutoffTime then
move theMessage to theArchiveTarget
set theCount to theCount + 1
else
# we get messages from oldest to newest
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
# archive sub-folders
repeat with thisSubfolder in mail folder of theInbox
# find the archive subfolder corresponding to this
repeat with thisARCHIVEubfolder in mail folder of theArchiveInbox
if name of thisARCHIVEubfolder is name of thisSubfolder then
set theArchiveTarget to thisARCHIVEubfolder
end if
end repeat
# archive messages
repeat with theMessage in message in thisSubfolder
if time received of theMessage < theArchiveCutoffTime then
move theMessage to theArchiveTarget
set theCount to theCount + 1
else
# we get messages from oldest to newest
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
end repeat
end tell
I'm working in AppleScript Editor v2.6.1 (152.1), Microsoft Outlook 2011 v14.3.5, OSX 10.9.4 Mavericks.

Ok, red_menace above me had a shorter and more elegant solution to the question, I'm adding this just for another example.
To solve your problem I'd make a mail rule that looked for any messages with "Filename:" in them (along with whatever criteria you wanted, like sender, domain, etc). The mail rule would execute the Applescript. My assumption is that the "Filename:foobar" text could be anywhere in the email, not necessarily the first thing in a paragraph, so I had to parse it differently.
The results end up in a datalist, (theFilename {} ) that you can parse later to collect all filenames found in whatever messages were processed.
I realize this could be cleaner, hope it's not hard to follow, but I did it really fast. It works flawlessly for me, picking out the name of the file no matter where in the email it appears.
using terms from application "Mail"
on perform mail action with messages theSelectedMessages for rule theRule
repeat with aCounter from 1 to count theSelectedMessages
set theMessage to item aCounter of theSelectedMessages
set theContent to content of theMessage
set theWords to every word of theContent
set theFilename to {}
set tid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ":"
repeat with thisLoop in theWords
try
if (text item 1 of thisLoop) is "Filename" then
set end of theFilename to (text item 2 of thisLoop)
-- rest of your logic goes here the display is just to show it finds the filename, take it out!
display dialog theFilename ¬
buttons {"OK"}
end if
end try
end repeat
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tid
end repeat
end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from
Message was edited by: stephen.bradley Typos for the win!

Where Is Archived Mail Saved?

When using the "Archived Mail" script, where do the messages get archived to?
Thanks.

Nevermind, I was trippin'...lol When you archive via the "Archived Mail" script you're prompted for a location to archive to.
Cheers.

HT6030 'Mail Update for Mavericks' destroyed my archived mail tree

Hello,
I bought my MacBook 15' Retina last week and imported my Mail archive into my new Mac. The 'Mail Update for Mavericks' destroyed completely my archived mail tree. I need to remove all of it and import this again. A really poor update!!!
Anyone else experiencing the same behavior?
Thanks
Leon

Who is your e-mail provider and is the account IMAP or POP?

Sync archived Mails

All,
I have 2 Macs and I would like them to be synced with most of my data. Synchronization should be possible public (as I travel a lot) and that's my "Time Machine lite".
At this stage I use a combination of iCLoud and Dropbox (partly with secret sync). Only problem I have is Mail.
My business account has quota, due this I need to archive mails. I created a Mailbox "On My Mac" by selecting => Mailbox => New Mailbox. This creates ~Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes/$YOURMAILBOX_NAME.mbox.
Here comes the question: How can I move this mbox to my dropbox? Quitting Mail and moving the mbox to the dropbox folder and creating a softlink didn't do the whole trick. I end up with a "read only" Mailbox. I can see the content of the Mailbox, but I can't longer write to it.
Storing the archived Email to another Account is not a option for me. Storing the complete ~Library/Mail/ folder to dropbox either. Rsync stuff would be possible, but it's ugly as it has network requirements.
Is somebody out there with a solution using dropbox or iCloud?
Thanks for taking the time to read and maybe respond.
-Walter
Detailed Informations:
MBA 11" and MBP 17" - Both are on Mountain Lion
3 Mail Accounts configured within Mail
            - 1 IMAP based (off topic)
            - 1 @me.com account (off topic)
            - 1 exchange account

If you have the same problem - Here is the solution: Use symbolic links in a Dropbox folder

How to delete archive mail from ipad mini

How do you delete archive mail on a mini ipad?

If this is part of a gmail account (not an Apple email account), then all "deleted" email goes to the archive box.
go to settings->mail contacts calendars -> choose your email account -> and turn archive messages to off.

Archiving Mail

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