[MlMt] can i do this...

[Barry Chern]

well, let me give you a simple explanation of why I would want to do 
this. I want to keep mail that I don't specifically delete forever. And, 
we use a third-party server to handle a large number of 
mailboxes/addresses and supporting a number of domain names. The space 
on that server is not unlimited.
On 11 Mar 2011, at 17:32, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> Hi Barry,
>
> first of all, thanks for trying out MailMate. Also thanks for using 
> the mailing list. Even though MailMate handles mailing lists quite 
> well, this mailing list has had very little traffic. Therefore, it may 
> also be received by people who have not checked out MailMate in a long 
> time (but joined the mailing list at some point). So, before answering 
> your question, I just want to state that MailMate is at version 1.0.2 
> now. For any recipients on this mailing list who want to catch up, the 
> following links may be useful:
>
> 	http://freron.com/
> 	http://blog.freron.com/2011/mailmate-1-0-released/
> 	http://tracker.mailmate-app.com/
> 	http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/34543/mailmate
>
> Currently, the mailing list has 47 members.
>
> Ok, now back to your message.
>
> On 11 Mar 2011, at 22:42, Barry Chern wrote:
>
>> Is there any way or ways I can use this and still keep all the 
>> messages I want on my hard drive forever without having them kept on 
>> the server (for more than a short period of time).
>
> A prelude to my answer: I get (variations of) this question quite 
> frequently and I must admit I am still a bit surprised. Using IMAP 
> only for temporary storage reduces IMAP to a complicated variant of 
> POP3. MailMate does not support POP3 by design, that is, I believe 
> IMAP should replace POP3 for most people. As I have stated elsewhere, 
> if MailMate was to support POP3, it would most likely be in a way such 
> that the retrieved messages were put directly into an IMAP mailbox.
>
> So, my preferred answer would be: I really think you should consider 
> to use IMAP as it was intended, if possible.
>
> My practical answers are:
>
> 1. The best way to keep messages “locally” only, is to run your 
> own IMAP server either on your own machine or your local network and 
> move the messages to an account on this server. The disadvantage is 
> that each message will be located both on the server and within 
> MailMate, but you could also think of that as a backup system.



>
> 2. Second-best is kind of a hack. If importing messages into MailMate, 
> you can first create a mailbox on some IMAP account and then take that 
> mailbox offline before importing messages into it. Then MailMate will 
> not try to upload the messages to the server. Note that you cannot 
> just move messages from an online mailbox to an offline mailbox and 
> then expect the messages to be removed from the server. MailMate does 
> not delete messages on the server before it is sure that the messages 
> have reached the destination. You can however delete the messages 
> server-side after moving them.
>
> I also have a selfish reason for wanting my users to use IMAP as it is 
> intended (or at least by using solution 1 above). If MailMate should 
> contain some bug that corrupts its internal database then it is much 
> easier for me to tell a user to start over by deleting everything and 
> then synchronize the accounts than it is to ask the user to locate any 
> local messages and re-import them into MailMate (which would also lose 
> any keywords applied to the messages). That said, MailMate does save 
> all messages in a simple disk folder hierarchy in standard raw message 
> format (.eml).
>
> Again, thanks for trying out MailMate. I'm sorry I couldn't give you a 
> more simple answer.
>
> And to everybody on the list: You are welcome to ask any questions you 
> like. Bugs and feature requests which do not seem relevant for many 
> users are probably better handled via the tracker 
> (http://tracker.mailmate-app.com).
>
> -- 
> Benny
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