Archiving mail locally
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Hola,
I need to free up space from an IMAP server mailbox.
1. I would make a copy of all of it locally.
2. Once saved locally I would delete the copy resident on the server.
3. Then all the messages would be available for query from Vivaldi Mail itself, right?If this is feasible, what steps do I have to follow to do this?
Thanks in advance
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@jafaro the steps below should do the trick, note that I write this from my phone and didn't check everything on the desktop.
after downloading all messages including the message bodies of the imap account (the setting in the account used to be called "prefetch" but now is "Download Messages for Offline Viewing and Searching") set the account to be an offline account and remove server account info.
You can check that all your messages are available locally simply by disconnecting from the internet and then going through your list of messages, and you can check if the account is really not synced with imap anymore by deleting some unimportant messages from the imap web interface and verifying that it is still there locally even after refreshing your accounts.
If all checks out, delete your imap account in the web interface and set up the account brand new.
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@WildEnte said in Archiving mail locally:
If all checks out, delete your imap account in the web interface and set up the account brand new.
I think this is the important point, I will try the whole procedure and report back.
Thank you very much.
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Sorry for chiming in here with a probably dumb question but I never understood how to utilise an IMAP account in a way simmilar to POP3 so to accumulate/archive certain mail locally while keeping only a certain number or a certain volume of mail online on the server.
Do I understand WildEntes answer correct that this is basically not possible in a continous (even manual) process but only by making a significant cut and then having two seperate accounts? One offline containing only all old mails and an empty new one which is online and accumulating new incoming mail.
But now thinking of it, by creating such offline account (even an empty one) it should be possible to move certain mails/folders from an IMAP account over to that local offline account, right?
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@WildEnte
Hola,I couldn't do what I wanted to do following your instructions, I think it's my fault for not explaining well what I want to do, sorry, I'll try it now:
What I want to do is to delete some mails on the mail server (with the web interface) but that Vivaldi doesn't delete them when checking for new mail.
I hope I have described my problem well now.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Thank you very much. -
@jafaro ah. well that's not meant to be possible per the idea of what IMAP is. What you want to do can be achieved with a POP3 account - whatever POP3 has downloaded is not in sync with what is on the server.
Using IMAP and the latest snapshot of Vivaldi (5.3.2679.3) is to move an email from one account's imap folder to another account's folder (right-click the email, choose "move..." - "move from <account/folder>" - "<target account/folder>"). If the second account is an offline account, it SHOULD a) make the email appear in the offline account and b) delete the email from the original account ... but when I tested it, instead it did strange things that I deem buggy.
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Then I will wait for that improvement to be consolidated.
Thank you again for your help.
Regards -
I have filed this as VB-89389
When the target account for moving the email is an online account, things seem to work out ok. But when the target account is an offline account, I was not able to properly move the email: in the Vivaldi mail client (which we like to call M3 here) the mail correctly appears in the email list of the offline account.
But the message body is missing ("Account is offline, unable to fetch message body"), and checking the web interface of the original (source) account, the email is still there. So it seems that Vivaldi realizes that it cannot upload the moved message to the offline account and kind of gives up.
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Any news on this? I, too, would like to keep local copies of my email from an IMAP server. POP3 is (unfortunately) not an option. Having two accounts, one oneline and up-to-date via IMAP and one offline, where I could periodically move, say, last years emails sounds good.
It's my understanding that both accounts would appear in the "All Messages" folders, and that I could search all mails (offline and online) by a single search in these folders, right?
Is this safe to do now? What's the status of VB-89389?
best wishes
kai -
@lesk since Hotmail effectively banned POP3 by insisting on OAuth login a couple of months ago, I've moved all my old Hotmail POP3 messages to an offline account (which wasn't easy*) and created a new IMAP account. I intend to move old messages from IMAP to the offline account every now and then, which I hope will go more smoothly than it did creating the offline account (I haven't really tested yet).
(*) Vivaldi doesn't let you create a new account with the same mail address as an existing account. Also it did NOT pass the messages between accounts properly, so I was forced to copy all the old messages to a temporary space to import in batches of a few thousand (Vivaldi also doesn't import a file-tree full of messages - only the messages in one directory!)
I would very much like there to be an archive option to do this automatically (I think I made a feature request many years ago, before mail was even out of beta...)
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Sorry, I can't help you, I'm not yet confident enough in the process of moving from an IMAP account server to a local M3 account.
Regards. -
As to the bug report @WildEnte noted above, it shows Resolved / Fixed.
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Thanks a lot!
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Hi again.
Today I sat down to test if archiving old mail by moving them to an offline account work for me (Vivaldi 6.2.3105.48 on Linux). I didn't. Here's what I did.
- Created a fresh email account (gmx.net) and filled it with a handful of emails
- Set up M3 to fetch emails via IMAP from this new account with success, that is: M3 downloads new mails from this account. Let's call this "the online account".
- Created a second account in M3, this one with a bogus (made-up/non-existing) email address, created as a "local account" and with a checkmark for "take account offline". Let's call this "the offline account".
- Moved some mails from the online account to the offline account by selecting mail, right-clicking and selecting "move > move from online account > offline account".
At first glance, this works:
- The moved mails are shown in the inbox of the offline account.
- They also appear in the All Messages > Received view. This view actually did not change at all, which is as I hoped it would be.
The problem is this: The moved emails are not deleted from the server. I checked deleting emails from the online account, which works fine, that is: the deleted mail disappear from the server (I can check via the webmail interface of the server).
So it seems I have created a situation where M3 and the server are not in sync (although connected via the IMAP protocol). Which means I cannot use this to archive mail to free up space on the server.
Am I missing something?
Is this approach (archiving in an offline account) working for somebody else?best wishes
kai -
@lesk I can confirm the behavior you describe and have logged it as bug VB-112979. I would also find it more logical to have the email removed from the online account.
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Not sure a local account is suited for such a task as no additional local folders can be created in it, i.e. only has an Inbox and Sent folder.
BTW, is there a reason why you are not running the current stable release (7.0.3495.29)?
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@yojimbo274064400 In Vivaldi, there aren't local folders anywhere, so it's really no difference.
Usually on Win11 running Vivaldi Snapshot builds. Opinionated about working efficiently with email. Folders are evil | Mail workflow: receive, read, reply, mark as read, done.
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You are correct; my mistake, sorry. This should not however distract from the point that a local account is ill-suited to the task
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@WildEnte Thanks for filing a bug report! I really wish I could figure out a way to archive mails, keep them part of "All Messages" and free up server space.
@yojimbo274064400 I wasn't aware that my vivaldi was updated, I thought I had it set up to automatically update. Will fix that asap. Thanks!
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@lesk said in Archiving mail locally:
Is this approach (archiving in an offline account) working for somebody else?
I recently had to adopt the same approach when Outlook stopped allowing POP3 access.
I encountered several problems (can't migrate an account from POP3 to IMAP, can't create a second account with the same mail address), including the fact that "moving" mail between accounts really didn't work properly at all (messages were allegedly moved yet most files remained in the storage of the original POP3 account which I wished to delete, indexing went screwy despite rebuilding the database and reindexing multiple times).
I was worried I was going to lose a lot of mail, so eventually I gave up doing it through the UI and simply copied all the messages to another location, deleted the accounts, created an offline account and a new IMAP account then imported all the messages back to the offline account.
So now, like you, I use the offline account to archive old mail and will try to move mail from the IMAP account to the offline account every now and then (the monthly backup). I haven't done it yet since I like to leave a few months of mail on the server, but I will probably have to do it next time. I'll try through the UI and if that doesn't work I'll be manually exporting/deleting/importing again.
