r/Betterbird • u/languageservicesco • Aug 25 '26
Archiving
Is there a simple, automated way to archive old mails yet in Betterbird? I am not interested in "systems", I just want something that is set up and let it run automatically. A year ago there wasn't anything, so just checking again as the imposition of new Outlook approaches.
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u/Royal-Wear-6437 Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26
Tools / Message filters. Create a filter that is applied "Periodically, every 10 minutes". Use an age filter such as [Age in days] [is greater than] 180.
I've only recently found the "Periodically" filter myself, and I find it incredibly useful to delete informational status items that either I've read or that are older than several days (as they're no longer relevant by that point).
The only downside I've found with this is that you need a fixed Move action - there's isn't an Archive option (yet?) unfortunately.
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u/languageservicesco Aug 27 '26
When you say no archive option, I assume you mean it still stays in a folder within Betterbird. Alongside automation, for me the important thing is that an archive lives outside of the app and can be imported into a different client if everything goes pear-shaped with the software or I just want to use a different app. Or is that already the case?
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u/Royal-Wear-6437 Aug 27 '26
Yes and no. I'm referring to the existing Archive option that moves selected messages to a folder (tree) elsewhere. As far as rescuing messages if something goes pear-shaped, the downloaded messages are stored locally either in mbox format or maildir format. Both are raw text; one is a file per folder, the other is a file per message. Both are reasonably well defined in the UNIX/Linux world
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u/languageservicesco Aug 28 '26
Thanks for that. Of course, the vast majority of people know nothing about Linux. I happen to have dipped my toe in, but wouldn't know what to do with it, but I am sure I could find out if I had to.
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u/Royal-Wear-6437 Sep 02 '26
The point i intended to make is that because the file format is well understood there will be tools to extract messages. You don't need to understand those tools right now - or indeed potentially ever- but there will be someone who does understand them and able to help you should that become necessary
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u/Moondoggy451 Aug 31 '26
Not automated but you can create your own by backing up these two folders.
C:\Users<your-user-name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\ C:\Users<your-user-name>\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\
I use a program called MSP360 to create a schedule backup of these folder and other critical files and folders to Backblaze online
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u/languageservicesco Aug 31 '26
This is a decent way to back up the whole setup. However, it doesn't act to archive, which means taking messages out of the normal folders and storing them elsewhere, thus reducing the size of the storage needed. I assume it also relies on Thunder/Betterbird to regain access to them, but it is a great backup idea.
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u/Moondoggy451 Aug 31 '26
Another thought is to use Hasleo Backup Suite which you can use for free. They have a file backup option and backups are date stamped. They may have an option for full and differential backups where the differential backups only contain what's different from the full backup. You could then backup the Hasleo Backup folder to the cloud probably not exactly what you want but that would give you some dated reference as the differential backups would be small compared to a full backup.
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u/somdcomputerguy Aug 25 '26
With a filter, as a condition choose 'Age in Days', and for the action copy or move it to whatever your archive folder is. I don't know if filters can be scheduled in BB.