Archiving mail locally

[jafaro]

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

[WildEnte]

@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.

[jafaro]

@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.

[goedl]

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?

[jafaro]

@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.

[WildEnte]

@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.

[jafaro]

Then I will wait for that improvement to be consolidated.
Thank you again for your help.
Regards

[WildEnte]

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.