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Ask HN: Best way to archive 25 years of emails

5 points by astatine 19d ago

I have emails from 1997-98 onwards all in one massive inbox, currently on gmail with emclient on Mac as the mail client (there have been probably a dozen services starting from self-hosted in the beginning). I would like to archive the historic mails for the first 25 years, but in a way that's actually searchable and usable in the future (and potentially importable to a new mail client/service) and not in any particular mailbox format that may go obsolete. There is no good reason to hoard them, other than "I feel like doing so". What are the best options, and tools?

juswilvel 10d ago
I literally just finished doing this with multiple years of Gmail. I used Thunderbird local folders for the archive, then Google Takeout to verify the message set before deleting anything. I also hashed the final MBOX copies before removing the originals. A little tedious, but it worked really well.
Alex3917 19d ago
For converting emails into archival formats, the two open source tools I'd look into are ePadd and Mailbagit. If at least some subset of these emails are things you'd like to explore making searchable/viewable by the general public, I run fwdeveryone.com and am happy to chat.
- astatine 19d ago
  Thanks. Will check out both ePadd and Mailbagit. Unfortunately, there's no really publicly accessible content in these mails. At least none that I can classify in any meaningful way through a filter or search criteria.
Rotundo 19d ago
Export in mbox format. Every mail client, now and in the future, will be able to read that.
- astatine 19d ago
  I was looking at mbox ... would you be able to recommend a simple (ideally, read-only) client which we can use to open and browse/search the mails in a mbox, without importing the content into a regular mail client.
  - beardyw 19d ago
    Mbox is text, so it is searchable with something which takes a huge file. Not sure you will find client type formatting as standalone option. I use Thunderbird which is at least local.
  - laruss5 18d ago
    [dead]
mpol 19d ago
Personally I prefer to have email history online in the form of a local IMAP server like Dovecot. It is saved in maildir format where each email is a separate file. I can then use an email client to move emails and folders between accounts. Make sure to have backups. I assume you currently don't have a backup, if it sits in gmail.
Alkhov 19d ago
Give it to ai for import to SQL or json file, it useful and you can copy to server
atmosx 18d ago
You could pass it all to hister (searchable) and then just export to any format or keep the mbox format and simply lzma & encrypt the archive file.
leros 18d ago
I've synced 20 years of Gmail to a local Thunderbird via imap. The initial sync took a few days but it was pretty simple to set up.

5 points by astatine 19d ago

juswilvel 10d ago

I literally just finished doing this with multiple years of Gmail. I used Thunderbird local folders for the archive, then Google Takeout to verify the message set before deleting anything. I also hashed the final MBOX copies before removing the originals. A little tedious, but it worked really well.

Alex3917 19d ago

For converting emails into archival formats, the two open source tools I'd look into are ePadd and Mailbagit. If at least some subset of these emails are things you'd like to explore making searchable/viewable by the general public, I run fwdeveryone.com and am happy to chat.

astatine 19d ago
Thanks. Will check out both ePadd and Mailbagit. Unfortunately, there's no really publicly accessible content in these mails. At least none that I can classify in any meaningful way through a filter or search criteria.

Rotundo 19d ago

Export in mbox format. Every mail client, now and in the future, will be able to read that.

astatine 19d ago
I was looking at mbox ... would you be able to recommend a simple (ideally, read-only) client which we can use to open and browse/search the mails in a mbox, without importing the content into a regular mail client.
- beardyw 19d ago
  Mbox is text, so it is searchable with something which takes a huge file. Not sure you will find client type formatting as standalone option. I use Thunderbird which is at least local.
- laruss5 18d ago
  [dead]

mpol 19d ago

Personally I prefer to have email history online in the form of a local IMAP server like Dovecot. It is saved in maildir format where each email is a separate file. I can then use an email client to move emails and folders between accounts. Make sure to have backups. I assume you currently don't have a backup, if it sits in gmail.

Alkhov 19d ago

Give it to ai for import to SQL or json file, it useful and you can copy to server

atmosx 18d ago

You could pass it all to hister (searchable) and then just export to any format or keep the mbox format and simply lzma & encrypt the archive file.

leros 18d ago

I've synced 20 years of Gmail to a local Thunderbird via imap. The initial sync took a few days but it was pretty simple to set up.