archive my apple mail mailboxes?

March 23, 2005 12:19 PM

is there anything like this available for apple mail? i need a way to archive my huge mailboxes so i can search them later...
posted by subpixel to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I have been looking for a similar solution. Here are three options I've found:

MailSteward looks like the best program out there if you're just trying to slim down the number of messages you keep archived within Mail.app. I have tried the demo version, and I will likely pay for the full-function version when I find time to properly archive ten years' worth of email.

If you already have FileMaker Pro (a significant investment in its own right), you could try Mail to FileMaker Importer, which basically does the same thing as MailSteward, but within the FileMaker environment. I've tested this one, with decent results. If you're familiar with FileMaker, this might be the best option for you.

There's also a free AppleScript solution, which I have downloaded but not used much, but I'm not sure how usable the archived files are. This one has two options: archive or export. The export function seems to be designed to create .mbox files that can be imported into other programs, and the archive function (which I just tried) did nothing more than move all of the email from one folder into a new "archive" folder, still within Mail.app. (I may be missing something, but I can't see a difference between the regular folder and the "archive" folder.)
posted by lewistate at 2:03 PM on March 23, 2005

Do you need the automated message selection and full browsability, or just a way to occasionally offload a bunch off messages into an archival format that can be searched if necessary?

If the latter, just select any Mail.app folder, drag to the Desktop and voila the folder's contents appear as a consolidated mbox-format file (which any standard text editor can search if necessary--or you can reimport into Mail if you later need to browse the messages individually).
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 2:20 PM on March 23, 2005

mailsteward comes close but it can't be scheduled and, weirdly, it won't archive your DELETED or TRASH folder.

i need an archive program to perform SCHEDULED archiving (say, weekly) of ALL mailboxes - that way i just run my business and if an email i'm looking for is not in my sent or deleted folder, i'll know without a doubt it's in the archive and i can grab it.
posted by subpixel at 4:08 PM on March 24, 2005