2 things to distinguish: archiving and backup: a backup is a copy of a file, either on the same drive, or an external drive or a cd-rom or something other external, meant to be there if the original file gets corrupted or anything the like happens.
an archive is something stored away for potential later retrieval and no longer residing in the active database. keeps the active database slim, lean and fast while still allowing access (if needed) to older information. somebody who has a super big database will be happy with just a backup and will not need an archive. I though have databases dating back to 96 or even earlier, with 10's of thousands of messages, so big that even my archives are split up into files per category (i.e. family is one, administration is another, clients is another, lists are several others etc.). Personally I do think if a database grows above 100 mb it's a good idea to archive. a backup is just a copy of the current datafile which you can do daily manually yourself, or via applescript and even scheduled or via some application like synch! etc. - my daily copy I do via scheduled via ical and applescript. my daily backup of my whole powerbook (where PM is on) happens daily via Synch! to an external firewire drive. Every few months i will burn important stuff to a CDR. various ways to do an archive. what I personally like best is to have it in a simple text format. like filemaker. or eMA (shareware which uses filemaker as basis) which is especially made for archiving purposes. you could even just create another user environment (I used to do this, but can't remember the steps involved). so - depending on the amount of emails and importancy of emails, you will need to figure out for yourself what way you want to go. hope this helps, ---marlyse >Now as a new PM user, how do I back up by emails? Is it under >File;Database;Export? If so, where does the database reside and how do I >access the emails?
