
Ask HN: Do you save/archive your emails? - runxel
I was wondering what the best way to save Emails is, really.<p>I am using Thunderbird, configured to IMAP, and normally can find anything I want. But how to make this info to persist? Especially when in a working environment, where often enough Emails are kind of legal documents, which need to be preserved, if there any debates in the future, or just to reconstruct things later.<p>I&#x27;ve seen many people saving their Emails as `.eml` along the other project files, which I think is a dumb idea, because you will lose all that meta data (treeview!).<p>Others are using the &#x27;archive&#x27; function of there email programs – also not a good idea.<p>What&#x27;s your solution?
======
zelphirkalt
At work I simply use the shortcuts "M" to mark as read and "A" to archive and
almost everything is archived, except for useless information. I also have
lots of filters configured, which put emails into appropriate local
subfolders, so that I can access them already knowing their category and
mentally parse them faster.

In private, I have a much more elaborate setup, making use of saved searches
and sub saved searches, tags, multiple e-mail accounts. Private e-mails have
much more variety than work e-mails and I also do not see the need to keep
them all. However, I still keep many, for example for all kinds of programming
languages in my kind of "read later" subfolders. If I was to look at all of
them, however, I would probably have years of work ahead of me. It is probably
just a way to categorize and declutter the inbox. Every few weeks I need to be
really determined to get my inbox to below 10 e-mails, otherwise uncategorized
e-mails will fill it up quickly. Sometimes I need to revise my folder
structure or, rarer, need to add another saved search.

I always find my e-mails either by looking in the correct folder, saved search
or by using the global search or view local search.

I find Thunderbird indispensable for my workflow and highly configurable. The
only thing lacking is a compound condition system for saved searches or
filters instead of only having disjunctive or conjunctive single attribute
conditions.

------
Someone
_”where often enough Emails are kind of legal documents, which need to be
preserved”_

Nowadays, e-mails also often are legal documents that need to be destroyed in
due time. For example, you can’t legally keep an application letter around
forever, irrespective of whether it got delivered by snail mail or e-mail.

At work, I throw away a year of e-mails at the start of each year, keeping one
year, growing to two years during the year.

------
javagram
If you are in a “working environment” and you are working for a large
corporation, your IT department should be doing this for you using the
archiving / retention systems built into G Suite / Office 365 / whatever mail
server you’re using.

If you aren’t using an IT-managed system, look into the best way to create
backups of your email service and store those backups with your regular
backups. Google offers “Google Takeout” or there are SaaS services that will
do this for you, e.g. Backupify. Other email services have similar features.

------
zzo38computer
I just save them in a mbox file, using the "s" command, which automatically
moves it to the mbox file in the home directory. I can then use "mail -f" to
recall them.

------
jolmg
I use isync/mbsync[1], probably available via your package manager. It's a
utility that can sync between IMAP and Maildirs. So, I just sync each account
to subdirectories in ~/mail/ and my email client views my emails from there
instead of connecting itself to the IMAP server.

[1] [http://isync.sourceforge.net](http://isync.sourceforge.net)

------
klingonopera
On Thunderbird, I create local copies (select all messages, right-click, copy-
to local folder), right-click on that to properties, find its location on
disk, and compress and archive.

Not sure about whole portability aspect of this, recently upgraded my desktop
and copied straight from one Thunderbird local directory to the other, that
worked. But I wonder if Thunderbird upgrades, if there'd ever be a problem
with this method.

------
jesterson
I'm keeping zero Inbox while sending important emails to DevonThink.

------
itronitron
if you want to properly archive your emails then you should print them on
paper

~~~
steve_adams_86
Is this true though? I feel like encrypted and redundantly stored in some cold
web storage would be inexpensive and reliable, whereas with paper... Well, I
lose those all the time, but I have files in cold storage that I guess by now
are 15 years old or so.

Another tough part of using paper is that you'd need to do it frequently. I
get so many emails, and I'd like to keep a good portion of them. I'd be
printing every week. It would be pretty expensive and inconvenient.

~~~
itronitron
I suppose my comment was a bit cavalier, this wouldn't be a good choice for
most of your emails, just the very important ones of which I assume there are
no more than several each month (or year).

Printing as a photograph would be more durable and could easily be pasted into
a photo album. If the photo included a child (of the person taking the
photograph) standing next to the email then that would further ensure that it
doesn't get tossed in the trash, and also provide a rough timestamp for future
generations.

I don't consider cloud storage to be permanent, secure, or reliable. I used to
have 'important' files on zip-drives and floppies if anyone remembers what
those are. Many computers no longer have CD or DVD drives. SD cards and thumb
drives seem like a lasting technology, for now at least. I still have
important documents printed from twenty-five years ago.

~~~
mceachen
SD cards typically lose their data integrity within a decade, and sometimes as
soon as 5-7 years.

Some SD cards support "extended storage" for up to 20 years, but it's an
uncommon feature.

