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Automatic Archiving of E-Mails

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 70 views
  • Last reply by sfhowes

chrober
chrober
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Hi all,

is there any chance to have Thunderbird automatically archiving my E-Mails (e.g. move all IMAP mails older than x months to the archive on my local PC).

While Thunderbird is already coming with a nicely cutomizable archive feature (e.g. configure the archiving structure of the archive folder) I am not aware of how/if this archiving feature can be triggered automatically. Currently I am using it manually, i.e. for every IMAP folder I am selecting messages older than 6 months and hit the 'a' key.

Is there any way to have Thunderbird do this automatically? I saw two add-ons for that, but the one (Awesome Auto Archive) is not compatible with newer Thunderbird versions and the other one (AutoarchiveReloaded) warns about the risk of losing data. So both add-ons are not an option.

Isn't (automatically) archiving mails a rather common use case? Shouldn't Thunderbird be able to do this out of the box?

Best regards, Christoph

Hi all, is there any chance to have Thunderbird automatically archiving my E-Mails (e.g. move all IMAP mails older than x months to the archive on my local PC). While Thunderbird is already coming with a nicely cutomizable archive feature (e.g. configure the archiving structure of the archive folder) I am not aware of how/if this archiving feature can be triggered automatically. Currently I am using it manually, i.e. for every IMAP folder I am selecting messages older than 6 months and hit the 'a' key. Is there any way to have Thunderbird do this automatically? I saw two add-ons for that, but the one (Awesome Auto Archive) is not compatible with newer Thunderbird versions and the other one (AutoarchiveReloaded) warns about the risk of losing data. So both add-ons are not an option. Isn't (automatically) archiving mails a rather common use case? Shouldn't Thunderbird be able to do this out of the box? Best regards, Christoph

All Replies (3)

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 25 Contributor
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You could create a filter like the one in the attached picture. Filters run automatically on the Inbox, or manually on any other folder. It might be wise to test with copying, instead of moving, to ensure mail isn't lost.

Consider also something like MailStore Home for archiving.

chrober
chrober Question owner
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Hi sfhowes,

thanks for your reply!

It seems like your proposal bypasses the archive feature of Thunderbird. I'd really like to use the archive feature since it allows for (1) having archive subfolders per month and (2) retaining the folder structure of my inbox in these monthly folders. That's the way I want my e-Mail archive to be organised. If I understand it right, your solution would move all messages to be archived into the very same archive folder, wouldn't it?

However, MailStore Home sounds promising. I'll give it a try.

Cheers, Christoph

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 25 Contributor
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The filter shown in the above picture is just a starting point. You add criteria (click the + button) to sort by sender, subject, size etc., and create extra filters with different actions, to practically duplicate the manual archiving, which only sorts by month and year.