Help with whats the best way to manage email history

[LRohwer]

I've been using Mac Mail for years now. My accounts are all currently set up as IMAP accounts but I didn't do that until the iPhone came out, so everything prior was handled as POP. I've got tons of email that I can't just delete because it helps me with referenceing my business history. My web site hosting company only allows so much email storage before I have to pay a ridiculous amount of money and I'm tired of trying to go through old emails to make more space for new ones.

Is there a good way for me to save the emails from before a certain date as an archive on my machine (that Mac's Mail app will still search through when I'm trying to look up history) so that I can just delete what exists out on the server?

Thanks for your help in advance!

 

[Matthew Yohe]

You should be able to create "local" mail folders and thus you can drag emails to this folder and then delete the rest from the server.

 

[LRohwer]

Thanks Matthew! I wasn't sure how the account being set up as an IMAP would behave with folders created under the "On My Mac" section of the mail app. I have a Time Machine backup but I want to be careful not to create a headache recovering things after deleting files on the server. Do you know for sure that this will work?

 

[Matthew Yohe]

Thanks Matthew! I wasn't sure how the account being set up as an IMAP would behave with folders created under the "On My Mac" section of the mail app. I have a Time Machine backup but I want to be careful not to create a headache recovering things after deleting files on the server. Do you know for sure that this will work?

Emails you put in "On My Computer" will definitely be saved on your computer.

And you could recover these from Time Machine as well.

Why not copy some of those emails to the "On My Computer" folder first, let time machine do its thing and then delete them in On My Computer. You'll see you can recover them.