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Archiving Email to Avoid Hitting Your Quota

There are two protocols for retrieving/reading email: POP3, which brings permanent copies of messages to your device, and IMAP, which brings only temporary copies to your device leaving permanent copies on the server. If all your email apps, both mobile and desktop/laptop, use the IMAP protocol and you never delete older mail, then at some point, you may receive emails from the server telling you that you’re nearing your disk usage quota.

One solution for desktops and laptops is to Archive older messages. Archiving will move older emails from your “live” email account folders, which live on the server, to a storage location on your PC. This will lower your disk usage on the server, and in most cases, the messages will be in the same relative folder location as they were before being moved. To see how to archive email messages in MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, and BLAH, keep reading.

MS Outlook & Mozilla Thunderbird

Later Versions

To manually archive older items in later versions of Outlook…

Do one of the following depending on your Outlook version.
- In Outlook 2013: Click File > Info > Cleanup Tools > Archive.
- In Outlook 2016: Click File > Info > Tools > Clean up old items.
Select Archive this folder and all subfolders, and choose the folder you want to archive.
NOTE: Here you can archive folders individually if you wish. However we recommend selecting your top level email account as shown boxed in red below. This will assure that all older items in all folders get archived in one operation.
For Archive items older than, enter or select a date.
Tick the box to Include items with “Do not AutoArchive”.
Under Archive file:, choose a folder location on your system where you’d like to save the archive file, and give the file a name. NOTE: If this is prefilled and the folder location and file name are acceptable, you don’t need to do anything here.
Click OK to begin the archive operation.

After clicking OK if you are not back at your email, click the left-pointing arrow in the circle at the top left of the Outlook window to return there. If Outlook says it is not responding, let it go! It’s not frozen, it’s just busy archiving. Once back at your email, the status bar at the bottom of the Outlook window should show the progress of the Archive operation.

Outlook 2010

To manually archive older items in Outlook 2010…

Click the File tab.
Click Cleanup Tools.
Click Archive.
Select Archive this folder and all subfolders, and choose the folder you want to archive.
NOTE: Here you can archive folders individually if you wish. However we recommend selecting your top level email account as shown boxed in red below. This will assure that all older items in all folders get archived in one operation.
For Archive items older than, enter or select a date.
Tick the box to Include items with “Do not AutoArchive”.
Under Archive file:, choose a folder location on your system where you’d like to save the archive file, and give the file a name. NOTE: If this is prefilled and the folder location and file name are acceptable, you don’t need to do anything here.
Click OK to begin the archive operation.

After clicking OK if you are not back to your email, click the Home tab at the top left of the Outlook window to return there. If Outlook says it is not responding, let it go! It’s not frozen, it’s just busy archiving. Once back at your email, the status bar at the bottom of the Outlook window should show the progress of the Archive operation.

Outlook 2007

To manually archive older items in Outlook 2007…

On the File menu click Archive.
Select Archive this folder and all subfolders, and choose the folder you want to archive.
NOTE: Here you can archive folders individually if you wish. However we recommend selecting your top level email account as shown boxed in red below. This will assure that all older items in all folders get archived in one operation.
For Archive items older than, enter or select a date.
Tick the box to Include items with “Do not AutoArchive”.
Under Archive file:, choose a folder location on your system where you’d like to save the archive file, and give the file a name. NOTE: If this is prefilled and the folder location and file name are acceptable, you don’t need to do anything here.
Click OK to begin the archive operation.

You should now be back at your email. If you click something and Outlook says it is not responding, let it go! It’s not frozen, it’s just busy archiving. Once back at your email, the status bar at the bottom of the Outlook window should show the progress of the Archive operation.

Mozilla Thunderbird v78

Mozilla Thunderbird does not have an automated archive function like MS Outlook. In Thunderbird, messages must be manually selected then told to archive. It’s basically the same as Moving them manually, but after selecting the emails to be archived, you can just click one button, which does save a little time. However before using the Archive button, you’ll first want to create then choose the archive folder location.

In the Folder Pane on the left, right click Local Folders, select New Folder, and give the new folder a name like Archives. This will be the folder where all your archives will be saved.
In the Folder Pane on the left, right click the email account in question (usually shows as your email address) and choose Settings.
On the left, click Copies & Folders.
On the right, scroll to the Message Archives section.
Tick the box to Keep message archives in:.
If you called your folder Archives, the correct option may already be selected here. Either option should end up showing the name of the folder you just created then “on Local Folders”.
Click the Archive Options button.
For When archiving messages, place them in… select A single folder.
Tick the box to Keep existing folder structure or archived messages. This will ensure that your existing folder structure will be mirrored in the Archives folder.
Close the Settings tab.
In your live email account, click on a folder from which you’d like to archive some messages.
Highlight the messages to be archived by using one of these methods…
1. To select all messages in the folder, press Control+A on your keyboard.
2. To select a group of messages that are all together, Click the first message, then hold down the Shift key and Click the last message. This will select the first, last, and all messages in between.
3. To select non-adjacent messages (i.e. some that are not all together), press and hold the Control key and Click each message. This allows yo to select random, non-adjacent messages.
Once you’ve highlighted the messages you want to archive, click the Archive button in the blue Conversations bar.

Repeat steps 11-13 for each folder in which there are messages you want to archive.

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Archiving Email to Avoid Hitting Your Quota

MS Outlook & Mozilla Thunderbird

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