[MlMt] dealing with large mailboxes

[Scott]

Hi,


> so my SO keeps all sent mail etc.  the ~/mail/Sent folder has 97,000
> messages going back to 2000 or so.  mailmate is starting to choke and
> fail every few days.
>
> if she creates ~/mail/old/Sent mailmate will still see and have to
> deal with it.
>
> how are folk dealing with this?


My (current) solution is a bit of a hybrid of what others have already 
mentioned.

For the current calendar year, I keep everything in the default folders 
for Sent and Archive.  For me, Archive is where I put things that aren't 
important enough for a dedicated folder, and which have been 
answered/dealt with.

At this time of year, when there is a natural lull in my email activity 
due to holidays and whatnot, I undertake several housecleaning 
activities.

Since it is now the start of 2019, the things I've done are:

1)  Make a new IMAP folder for 2018
2)  Move everything from my Archive folder from 2018 into the 2018 
specific year folder
3)  Go to my Sent folder and find all mail from 2016 (yes, 2016) and 
move it to the 2016 specific year folder.
4)  Go to my Sent folder and find mail from the first six months of 2017 
and move it to the 2017 specific year folder.

My reason for the delay in processing Sent mail to specific folders is 
mostly due to client applications and needs I've had to search for mail.

It was simply easier and faster to find a message I knew I sent by going 
to the Sent folder and scoping the search there, rather than trying to 
search all mail, or trying more complicated search combinations (this is 
particularly true under iOS rather than MailMate).

I regularly have to find old sent mail from many years previous, but, 
after about 18 months or so my brain tends to forget exactly when things 
were sent so not matter what I have to do a more thorough search.

If I can remember exactly when an email conversation took place, chances 
are it was within that time window.

I use a handful of Smart Mailboxes in MailMate, many based on IMAP 
Keywords ("Tags"), and that helps.

Most of my per-year folders are under 20K messages in each IMAP account 
(I have several).  Since there are many more messages in dedicated 
folders, this helps keep things spread out.

Not sure how much it really matters to MailMate, but, my method is 
really more about creating just the right number (but not too many) of 
boxes for me to know where to find things.

Scott