On 15 Jul 2018, at 15:30 (-0400), Michael Hucka wrote:
I recently had to switch to Gmail as my imap server [1]. It seems
that Gmail auto-deletes mail from the trash after 30 days.
<MINOR RANT>
This is a good policy which benefits the community of people running and
using mail systems with fewer resources than Google by encouraging basic
email hygiene. The Trash mailbox exists to reduce accidental
unrecoverable deletions, which would otherwise be common. It probably
doesn't matter with GMail, but many less huge mail systems
differentiate storage models between different special-purpose mailbox
types, optimizing INBOX and Trash for heavy churn of relatively few
messages and others for many messages that are rarely deleted. Using
Trash as a temporary holding area is a good habit to have.
I am not an archive-hater: I have live access to half a million messages
in my personal archives accumulated over 25 years. Trash is not an
archive: it is TRASH. MailMate has built-in support for that
distinction.
</MINOR RANT>
I'm looking for a way to preserve all my mail. Does anyone have a
scheme to preserve mail permanently rather than let it be deleted?
For example, is there a way to have MailMate (or another piece of
software) periodically and automatically move mail out of the Trash
into a folder (or even another imap server) for archiving?
Create an IMAP mailbox and tell MailMate that it is your Archive
mailbox. Archive is a special-purpose mailbox type like Deleted
Messages, Sent Messages, and Junk. Train yourself to use "Delete" and
"Archive" selectively. Don't delete messages yo want to archive, don't
archive messages that really should just be deleted.
There are some things you can do with Smart Mailboxes and Rules to
automate archives but they are limited by MM not having automated
mailbox creation.
I'm a long-time unix & mac user and a software developer too, so I'm
not afraid of command lines or daemons or writing some software
myself. If someone has already done this or can advise about
dead-ends to avoid, I'd appreciate the tips.
If you retain backups of ~/Library/Application
Support/MailMate/Messages/IMAP then you are retaining recoverable copies
of all mail. If you don't want to keep your archives on the IMAP server,
you can keep them in whatever repository you use for your backups.
Best regards,
MH
[1] To avoid the inevitable snarky "don't use gmail" comments, let me
just say I don't have a choice in the matter for the time being.
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Bill Cole
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(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Currently Seeking Steadier Work: https://linkedin.com/in/billcole
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