This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Archive all mail older than 30 days, all folders

  • 7 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • Last reply by david

more options

I have a lot of IMAP folders with a lot of old mail. In order to reduce remote server space usage I would like to move all mail older than 30 days to its equivalent local archive folder.

I can do this easily on a per-folder basis by selecting messages and selecting Organise > Archive from the right-click menu. But if I use the search facility to get all mail in all folders older than 30 days, there is no option to move the selected mail to its equivalent local archive folder.

Is there any way to achieve this?

I have a lot of IMAP folders with a lot of old mail. In order to reduce remote server space usage I would like to move all mail older than 30 days to its equivalent local archive folder. I can do this easily on a per-folder basis by selecting messages and selecting Organise > Archive from the right-click menu. But if I use the search facility to get all mail in all folders older than 30 days, there is no option to move the selected mail to its equivalent local archive folder. Is there any way to achieve this?

Chosen solution

Ok, I confess to not having a true solution, as I've never seen this issue. If I were to try this, my approach would be to:

  1. set the archive option for account to preserve existing structure and save in Local Folders
  2. create a search folder for the account for messages older than 30 days
  3. run the search and save the results
  4. highlight the list of results and click 'archive' - each message should be stored in like-named archive folder.

I did a small test and it worked for me.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (7)

more options

You might experiment with setting a manual filter to locate messages older than 30 days and move them that way.

Helpful?

more options

david said

You might experiment with setting a manual filter to locate messages older than 30 days and move them that way.

Unfortunately I don't think this will work. The filter rules don't have an "archive" action, and the destination archive folder is going to be dependent on the current source folder.

Helpful?

more options

I think it may still have merit for experimentation. Each filter is focused on one account and the selected messages could be moved to archive.

Helpful?

more options

david said

I think it may still have merit for experimentation. Each filter is focused on one account and the selected messages could be moved to archive.

I have indeed experimented. The filter is account based, but we are talking folder-level here. The messages in each folder must be moved to the corresponding folder in the local archives folder.

If you believe this is achievable, please outline the exact specification of the filter rule, because based on my own experiments, no such facility exists within the current mail filter rule configuration.

Helpful?

more options

Chosen Solution

Ok, I confess to not having a true solution, as I've never seen this issue. If I were to try this, my approach would be to:

  1. set the archive option for account to preserve existing structure and save in Local Folders
  2. create a search folder for the account for messages older than 30 days
  3. run the search and save the results
  4. highlight the list of results and click 'archive' - each message should be stored in like-named archive folder.

I did a small test and it worked for me.

Helpful?

more options

david said

  1. create a search folder for the account for messages older than 30 days

I didn't know about the "Saved Search" facility, but this works great for collating emails for archiving. Thank you very much for the help.

Helpful?

more options

I was glad to help. Funny. I didn't know about setting archive to preserve folder structure until you posted your question. :) so we both benefited.  :)

Helpful?

Ask a question

You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.