Mozilla Mail Program Best answer on the web
attachments) in the Mozilla mail program. There appears to be no tool
to archive, and the personal (local) mail folders appear to be hidden.
I have several GB of mail and attachments, and so far, deleting old
mail has been all I can do.
I apologize for the delay. Somewhere along the way, the messages Google sends me that someone has requested a clarification are getting lost.
Your attachments are stored in the files in your profile's mail folder. Attachments to messages in your inbox are in the file called inbox along with the plain text of those emails. If you're curious, you can open the file up in a text editor like notepad, and look for the line that starts an attachment. For example, a word document mailed to me from a mac begins:
Content-Type: application/msword; name="aworddocument.doc";
x-mac-type="42494E41"; x-mac-creator="4D535744"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="aworddocument.doc"
That is followed by a big chunk of gibberish which is the (encoded) content of the file.
So, when you back up your mail files in the directories I mentioned, you are also getting your attachments. They are not stored as separate files, but are actually a part of the email they came from. This makes it harder to separate out just your attachments, but it also keeps everything in one place, making it harder to accidently separate an email from its attachments.
Should your mail on your hard drive get corrupted or deleted, you simply move the backed-up mail folder from CD or tape or wherever you store your backups back to your profile directory. All your attachments and whatnot will be there just as they were when you made the backup.
I hope this has been helpful, and again I apologize for the delay in responding to you,
-Haversian
You dont mention your platform but assuming you are on a PC you need to look in your profile folder. Assuming you have XP or windows 2000 it will be in a path similar to the one on my PC:
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\.slt\Mail
note the you should replace with YOUR username and the prefex to the .SLT folder is (seemingly) generated randomly.
That contains all of your mail. there may be further folders labeled with "local mail" and perhaps the server name of your mail server.
Each mailbox is represented by TWO files IE: inbox and inbox.msf.
the .msf file contains some metadata about the mailbox and *MAY* not be completely necessary for the mailbox to function.
Backing up these files and then removing them FROM WITHIN MOZILLA MAIL will clear space on your hard drive.
One thing to note the mailbox file format is plain text, so you can open them in any application that opens text files. If you see big chunks of what seems to be nonsense data, that is the encoded attachment. So YES the attachment cannot be (easily) separated from the message it was attached to.
Thanks for any help you can give me.
Stuart
Your profile, which as amigasteve noted, is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\.slt\ (assuming you have only one user profile registered in Mozilla. If you have more than one, let me know), has everything you need.
Within that profile directory is a file called abook.mab which is part of your address book that you might want to back up. Within the mail folder you will have two or more folders. Firstly, Local Folders which contains the so-called local folders: drafts, sent, templates, trash, and unsent messages. Each folder will have two files, 'folder name' and 'folder name.msf'.
Also in the mail folder is one folder for each mail server you have configured in Mozilla. Likely there will be only one. This folder will have many sub-folders and files, depending on how many folders you have created within Mozilla mail to sort your mail into. Copying these files and folders will back this all up for you.
Unless you are planning on compressing the files when you back them up, such as with winzip or winrar, you should let Mozilla compress them for you. In mozilla mail, go to the left pane that has all your folders listed. Right-click on each of the folders you plan to back up, and select 'Compact This Folder'. That will reduce the size of your mail files by quite a bit and make the backups a bit easier. Then you can find the mail files as above and copy them wherever you need.
My network connection here (wireless) is starting to fade so I'm going to sign off. I'll get back to you with something more like a real HOW-TO with screenshots to show what I'm trying to say, if I can find one. In the meantime, if you run through what I've written and let me know if you need anything else, I'll get you that too.
Thanks for the question - always a pleasure to help a fellow Mozilla user!
-Haversian
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