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Ask Slashdot: Best (or Better) Ways To Archive Email?

Posted by timothy on from the just-work-on-your-memory dept.

An anonymous reader writes: I've been using email since the early '90s and have probably half a million emails in various places and accounts. Some of them are currently in .tar files, others in the original folders from obsolete or I-don't-use-them-anymore mail clients. Some IMAP, some POP3. You get the picture. I don't often need to access emails older than a year or two, but when I do, I have found that my only hope for the truly archived ones is to guess what Grep combo might find the right text in the file ... and then pick through the often unformatted, unwrapped, super ugly text until I find the email address or info that I'm searching for. Because of this, I tend to at-all-costs leave emails on servers or at least in the clients so that I can more easily search and find.

My question is whether there's any way to safely store them in a way that I can actually use them later, offline, in a way that allows for easy date searches, email address searches, and so on. Thunderbird for example has 'Archive' as an option, but if I migrate to a different client I assume that won't work anymore. So what ways to people archive emails effectively? Or is this totally a lost cause and I should keep limping along with grep?

5 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. hoarding mentality by Khashishi · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Sure, they might be useful at some point, but do you really need your emails from 20 years ago? Life is temporary. All things decay. Attachment causes suffering.

    1. Re:hoarding mentality by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I friggin' hate people who, on an Ask Slashdot, completely fail to answer the question and say something that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

      And yes, I am aware of the irony of posting a comment like this to criticize one, so you needn't bother pointing that out.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re:hoarding mentality by MightyYar · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Email is the new "box of letters". It can be fun and sentimental to go through old correspondence. When you die, your kids will have fun reading your old emails if they can figure out your devious passwords.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    3. Re:hoarding mentality by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Holding your business emails too long is a liability risk..

      I was just asked to recover email from the late 90s as part of a means to prove we had prior art on a patent that was being asserted against us. The email history included draft drawings, work orders to a manufacturer requesting customizations to our manufacturing equipment, invoices and negotiations with customers to work with it. etc. All with a clearly documented timeline that could be verified with multiple 3rd parties if it came to a court situation.

      This sword clearly cuts both ways.

    4. Re:hoarding mentality by jonnyj · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is no good reason to keep 25 years of email.

      There is no good reason to assume that your needs are the same as those of others.