Archiving Mail

Ramona, this is a question for you.

I want to archive my e-mail on cd, and your Archiving and Accessing Netscape/Mozilla Mail on CD seems exactly what I need, except for one point.

My mail folder has reached over 600 MB (it includes mail received with Netscape 3 back in '98, and with lots of 1 to 5 MB attachments), so I have to archive it now before it becomes too big for a CD.

However, you state "Copy any files you need from the Default Mail Account, except the MSF files ". My problem is that I have many subfolders (which may have sub-subfolders) and each of them has a number of mail files and MSF files. Picking out the MSF files and deleting them is quite a chore, which I would rather not do, so my question is: is there anything wrong with copying the MSF files to the disk archive as well?

By the way, I don't understand how the subfolders and files in my Mail folder map into the folders and subfolders in the Windows Explorer Mail folder I see in in my profile folder. It seems very inconsistent. Do you know of any link where they explain this?

 

xelaw,

I just tried copying everything, including MSF files to CD for my CD Archive account in Mozilla mail, and had no problems accessing the Mail. So you can certainly give it a try.

I'm sure I can find an explanation for you. I can also tell you that the SBD folders contain the subfolders of your Mail Account. The SBD folders are listed at the top of the Mail Account folders and subfolders. See this Screen Shot. When the Archive folder is expanded, then other subfolders will be listed at the top of that folder, and so on...

Ramona

 

OK, Ramona, I tried archiving my mail on the CD as you suggested, and it didn't work.

I followed your instructions exactly (I think), except that I archived the MSF files as well, as discussed above, and gave the archive a somewhat longer name, so that I would recognize it more easily in the future.

What happens when I put in the CD, open Netscape, and go to the "MailArhiveCD" folder (that's what I called it) in the mail window, it lists all the mail folder (and subfolder) names that I wanted to archive and put on the CD, so that part seems OK.

But then when I select one of the folders or subfolders, nothing appears in the right hand pane where the list of messages should show up. I can tell that the messages are on the CD because it contains almost 600MB, but I can't see them.

By the way, the local directory under server settings has to be "E:\MailArchiveCD" (a folder I created on the CD to hold all the mail files. "E:\" is not enough.

Any suggestions?

 

xelaw,

I have no idea why it didn't work for you if you followed the directions to the letter. When you copied the mail to the E:\MailArchiveCD folder, did you open the folder on your HD, and copy ONLY the folder and files contained in the Mail Account Folder, as shown in this Screen Shot ?

Yes, you do have to give the folder a name other than the Drive, as stated:

I'm wondering also if your "Dummy" account is set up correctly?

Can you view the files on your CD in Windows Explorer?

Ramona

 

OK Ramona, it's my fault.

I didn't read your link carefully enough, and I used a CD-R disk instead of a CD-RW. I realize now that when you read the mail, NS also has to write to the mail file. I copied the archive CD file I created onto a folder in my hard disk (partition D: instead of C and changed the Local Directory in Server Settings accordingly, and I saw all the mail messages in my archive there.

I'm going to leave things this way, except for deleting the archive folder now from D: and recreating it there at some time in the future when I will want to find something in my archive. I have just one CD-RW disk, which I got when I installed my first CD burner drive about 5 years ago, and never used. I tried to write to that, but the disk limited the read/write speed to 8X, and I figured it would take almost an hour to copy the (almost) 600 MB archive file, so I abandoned that attempt.

So thanks again, Ramona, and leaving the archive CD this way is fine with me.