Do you keep your old e-mails?

[imp]

EDIT: [Scroll down a few posts for what this thread's now about....]

Sorry about this - I know there's a techie thread somewhere, but I couldn't find it. Due to lockdown, I've finally got round to looking at the .dbx Outlook Express files I saved when I moved from PC to Mac in 2011. They contain all my emails from 2003 to 2010.

I've done all the requisite software searches, but when I try to download the trial software it takes me to Apple's App site which then says the App isn't available in Germany.

Is there a safe, reliable software for this kind of thing? I don't mind paying for it.

(I can open them with Text Edit, but content is hidden in masses upon masses of extraneous text and it would take me years to extract the content.)

[anton pulisov]

Try installing Thunderbird? I think that exists for Mac as well.

Apparently it can import dbx:

https://www.sysinfotools.com/blog/im...o-thunderbird/

[imp]

Thanks, ap. I no longer have Outlook Express, as such, just a series of folders I saved on to a disk before disposing of the old PC hard drive (each dbx folder represents one folder - so all the emails that were in, say 'freelance' are in one single file). So I'm not sure a new email programme would necessarily open them. I'm basically looking for a lazy way to click on them once and have them magically converted into an easily readable format. My guess, though, is that there's no way it's going to be that easy, because it never is.

[imp]

Actually, I've just found an option on Word now which wasn't there the last time I tried this several years ago - 'Recover text from any file'. There's still tons of extraneous text to wade through, but it's manageable - at various points the entire text of an email appears without any interruptions - and can be saved as a Word 1997-2004 file.

Edit, after a laborious half hour of cutting out text: It's going to take me until they find a Corona vaccine to bring some order into these files. Not helped by me saving each email back then with the whole chain of individual emails inside each one.

[imp]

As this thread quickly turned obsolete, I wanted to come back in and change the thread title to: 'Do you keep your old e-mails?' But it doesn't look like you can do that, even as the originator of the thread.

Anyway, I have almost all the letters written to me from the early 80s up until the digital age about 20 years later, so why would you not archive your emails? Obviously not the short ones for pure informational purposes, but the ones that replaced the role that letter-writing once had in our lives. The thought of losing 20 years of correspondence is like throwing out/deleting 20 years of photo albums.

My dad deletes e-mails right after he's read them once. Then when my step-mum asks him what so-and-so had to say, he can't remember.

EDIT: Blimey - that was quick. Thank you, admin/Snake!

[Giggler]

Current status of the first page of my Gmail inbox is 1-50 of 14,620.

So, yes, I do.

[Ginger Yellow]

I'm not sure the original thread is obsolete. Why are you resisting the suggestion to try importing the folders into another email client? It seems a lot easier than messing around with raw text files.

Anyway, as regards the newquestion, I don't consciously archive emails, but I don't delete them. I'm constantly searching back through my email for things from years ago, and I don't usually know what I'm going to need to search for until I do it. So why risk deleting it when storage is effectively free these days?

[Ginger Yellow]

Current status of the first page of my Gmail inbox is 1-50 of 14,620.

So, yes, I do.

Roughly 29,000 here (it's spread across several inbox categories). And in my work email client, my unread emails alone are over 100k, and that's just going back a couple of years, because everything gets auto-archived after a certain amount of time.

[Fussbudget]

I keep everything. I've got emails dating back to 2002 and paperwork older than that, all mostly organised as well. It proved really useful when I had to apply for permanent residence and citizenship.

[Ginger Yellow]

I'm not sure the original thread is obsolete. Why are you resisting the suggestion to try importing the folders into another email client? It seems a lot easier than messing around with raw text files. That said, it was surprisingly painful to bring my dad's Apple Mail folders over to his new Mac when he upgraded, but I imagine a third party client would be a lot more flexible in that regard to encourage people to switch.

Anyway, as regards the newquestion, I don't consciously archive emails, but I don't delete them. I'm constantly searching back through my email for things from years ago, and I don't usually know what I'm going to need to search for until I do it. So why risk deleting it when storage is effectively free these days?

[WOM]

Between Primary, Social and Spam, I'm around 45,000 in gmail. I rarely delete work email because invariably someone will ask some arcane question about something or someone from three years ago, and I'll have my hands on it in about a minute.

[matt j]

On the personal side, for anything before gmail, not anymore. I don't think I'd care to revisit my shitty e-mail correspondence from when I was younger.

At work (having left for a year and returned) the deletion of my e-mail archive for things from my first 14 years of employment is pretty sweet actually. Like a blank slate.

[Stumpy Pepys]

I also use GMail and haven't deleted an email in decades.

There are tutorials on how to upload a .dbx file to GMail.

[S. aureus]

I don't delete stuff because I occasionally have the desire to go back and find old emails for various reasons, very occasionally quite important ones.
Switching jobs has been an issue in this regard, as I then lose access to a whole bunch of my historical emails.

[ursus arctos]

Corporate lawyers tend to be awful at this, as we are often asked similar questions and prefer not to re-invent the wheel.

When I was on our IT committee, a number of the other members' primary motivation to serve was to be exempted from the firm guidelines on size of inboxes.

We ultimately went to a policy of automatically deleting anything that hasn't been filed to a folder after six months.

I episodically purge my Gmail of newsletters and the like, not "real" emails.

[Sporting]

I don't delete stuff because I occasionally have the desire to go back and find old emails for various reasons, very occasionally quite important ones.
Switching jobs has been an issue in this regard, as I then lose access to a whole bunch of my historical emails.

Same here. One answer is to immediately forward anything interesting or important to youŕ personal mail.

[pebblethefish]

I rarely even read them, let alone bother deleting them

[Balderdasha]

I never delete emails, as I may need to search through them for information one day. I mourn the loss of various old work email accounts and the information therein. I think if I was to work for a new company now I'd set up some sort of automatic forwarding system to my personal email.

Incidentally, how do you check how many emails you have in a Gmail account? I can't see a number anywhere.

[Sporting]

Incidentally, how do you check how many emails you have in a Gmail account? I can't see a number anywhere.

Near the top right hand corner, Mine says 1-50 [first page] of 2,652.

[Ginger Yellow]

Same here. One answer is to immediately forward anything interesting or important to youŕ personal mail.

Except half the time I don't know what's going to be interesting or important ahead of time. Like, most of my unread emails are things that are potentially interesting to someone, but not related to my day-to-day work. But then I get a question about that subject 2 years later, and I can answer it because I kept the "irrelevant" email.

[Sporting]

I even printed out some love emails...

[Balderdasha]

Near the top right hand corner, Mine says 1-50 [first page] of 2,652.

Mine doesn't. Do you have to be looking at Gmail on a laptop to see that? I'm using an android phone at the moment.

[Sporting]

I was looking on a laptop.

[Ginger Yellow]

Mine doesn't. Do you have to be looking at Gmail on a laptop to see that? I'm using an android phone at the moment.

Not a laptop per se, but the web client. You could probably see it on a phone browser.

[Balderdasha]

Not a laptop per se, but the web client. You could probably see it on a phone browser.

Web browser only shows me the number of unread emails (which is 4,205).

Anyway, this isn't important, I'll look on the laptop at some point. Thanks for your help.