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.

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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.
Before I write an AppleScript to do this, I thought I'd ask: Have you archived messages out of mail? How did you do it?
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Rule1.regexp: 1
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Thanks

I'd created about three weeks of a messages on this server prior to turning on the purge so they should be all legitimate messages and dates.
I ran a /imexpire -n -d -v 3
a snippet of the output. Seems to have deleted messages from the Sent and Trash but for some reason Inbox is left untouched. Sent has the exact same messagedays of 7 too.
user/s0243714/INBOX: exists (180) largest (102058) oldest (1192828919) qused (1117436)
applying ExpireRule: user/s0243714/INBOX
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     Rule5: regexp: 1
     Rule8: regexp: 1
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user/s0243714/INBOX: deleted 0 messages
user/s0243714/Sent: exists (10) largest (0) oldest (0) qused (32778)
applying ExpireRule: user/s0243714/Sent
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     Rule2: regexp: 1
     Rule5: regexp: 1
     Rule8: regexp: 1
     Action: discard
deleting user/s0243714/Sent UID 33
deleting user/s0243714/Sent UID 34
deleting user/s0243714/Sent UID 35
deleting user/s0243714/Sent UID 36
deleting user/s0243714/Sent UID 37
user/s0243714/Sent: deleted 5 messages
user/s0243714/Trash: exists (4) largest (0) oldest (0) qused (16220)
applying ExpireRule: user/s0243714/Trash
     MessageDays: 1
     Rule2: regexp: 1
     Rule5: regexp: 1
     Rule8: regexp: 1
     Action: discard
deleting user/s0243714/Trash UID 16
user/s0243714/Trash: deleted 1 messages

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Hi all
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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.
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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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+An error in the system has occurred. Please contact the system administrator if the problem persists.+
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Archiving old mail messages

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