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louis_sx

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 6, 2005
153
0
International House of Louis
The thought has never occurred to me - I really should back up my email. My ISP keeps the last three months of messages on the server, but older stuff - if I install OS X, I'll lose it. Is there a handy-dandy utility that will do this? Where are the files kept? I'm learning AppleScript out of boredom and could probably throw together a script to back it up, but I'd need to know what the files were. TIA
 
If you are using Mail.app, all your mail is in <your home folder>/Library/Mail. If you are using something else, it's basically just a matter of finding the folder in which that mail program stores the mail and copying that folder to a backup device.
 
~\Library\Mail\Mailboxes

They're usually rather large files, but they are easy to copy/replace. Over the past year, I have had to do this 5 times. I've never lost any old mail.

Hope it works for you!
 
Or you could find an ISP that provides IMAP accounts.

I know a few in the UK who provide them for small businesses (so they dont have to fork out for MS Exchange servers). Just an idea.
 
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