this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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How to keep all email locally in a useful format that can be searched across devices? (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago by crank@beehaw.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I have an account on an SMTP server. The server has a storage quota. I'd like the delete stuff from the server but keep it locally in case I need it. Just in case.

I'd like to be able to access the mail somehow on other computers and hopefully mobile devices on my network so that it can be searched when needed. I'm not sure what the best interface for that would be. A webmail client?

One option would be to use Thunderbird or another client to download the mail once in a while but disable deleting local messages when they are removed from the server. Would Thunderbird store the messages in a format I can use readily with other applications? Or should I use something else to download the mail?

What about situations where messages are moved from one folder to another on the server? Would I get a duplicate locally of the message appearing in both locations? Not sure how the storage and metadata actually are.

Also, is it possible in such a situation to put a message back on the server if I realize it was deleted in error?

Any idea would be welcome. I am a bit stuck.

I can use the command line comfortably but ideally I'd have a solution that doesn't rely on the terminal to find find messages and such. I don't really like terminal mail clients.

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[–] crank@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks I am looking at these. Do you think maildir format is the best to try to work with? When I was researching I find there are other formats such as mbox, or more program-specific formats. I was not having an easy time discerning which is the most portable, robust format.

[–] mosthated@feddit.nl 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I havent looked into these other formats because maildir works for me. I can saxe local backups, remoxe mail from the serveg, and even put it back later. All plain text.

[–] notsofunnycomment@mander.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you put your maildir on a (disk attached to a) raspberry pi, install mutt, and make that pi accessible by ssh you always have access to your mail.

[–] zzzzzz@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does mutt have search capabilities? Is it optimized such that it would be effective with large mailboxes? Thanks!

[–] marty_relaxes@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mutt (and neomutt) has very nice search capabilities, supporting regex search within specific mailboxes. However, it is a relatively slow search - unbearably slow for full text search in large mailboxes.

Here, notmuch is usually used to complement mutt. It's a very fast (full-text) mail indexer, which can be directly integrated in mutt and allows much faster searching (among other things such as advanced mail tagging, virtual mailboxes and more).

It is generally a royal pain to set up with so many moving parts but once you do it is a very fast, comfortable mail environment if you're comfy with the terminal.

[–] zzzzzz@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for this! I'm going to try to get this set up. It sounds perfect.