deGoogling strategy
Do you remember the GMail advertisement "never delete an email again"? So 17 years later, I want to move to a privacy respecting email provider, and I got myself a 27GB of old emails. I do not want to pay ~8$/mo for the luxury of having every attachment from 2014 available, I do not want to self-host a mailserver for that purpose either, and so 17 years later I come to old good .pst, only that nowadays I'd rather not lock in myself in a proprietary format, so here I am.
The solution I have in mind is a yearly read-only ~1GB sized mbox file backed up to an immutable storage, accessible from the laptop and office PC. I wish I would be able to open the mbox archives from android or nextcloud portal, but for some reason there are no such apps (Question #0: am I missing some obvious solution to access my archives from web/smartphone?).
The way to the solution splits in 3.
New incoming messages should be forwarded by gmail to the new provider of choice, let's call it for shorthand vivaldi. So the clients, TB on the PC should not check the gmail inbox at all. Replying to these messages however should be done via the gmail account. I think I can accomplish that just by configuring two accounts in TB for gmail and Vivaldi. Question #1 Is there some smarter way to manage a ghost gmail account so that I do not mistakenly reply from the wrong address?
Intermediate messages from the past ~2 years should be moved entirely to vivaldi server. I guess I can sync TB to gmail, define a rule that moves all messages newer than 1/1/2021 to vivaldi/Archive and run it on gmail/AllMail. Question #2 is it the correct way to transfer messages? How do ensure they are deleted on gmail server?
Old messages should be split into yearly local archives. It looks like the gmail account Copies&Folders/Archives feature should be useful. Question #3 How do I move the whole existent gmail web archive to local yearly mbox files and delete it from the server?
The questions might sound trivial, but the operation is rather scary and long, so I prefer to sound dumb and ask first.
Thank you!
Giải pháp được chọn
Here is my take. I personally have issues using Thunderbird synced data for archives where gmail is concerned as there is a more reliable way.
Create appropriate labels in Gmail for each year and get them applied to the gmail account using their mail filters.
Then toddle over to your Google takeout service and "takeout" all your labels as MBOX files. It will take a day or two, but you get to download everything in a zipped mbox format file.
Use a gmail filter to delete the account content once you are sure what you have is what you want.
Now you can add the mbox file using the import export tools add-on to Thunderbird's local folders. (Or if you understand enough just put the files into the Thunderbird profile. Quicker but requires more knowledge.)
They are your data stored locally and in no way associated with any particular account in Thunderbird. Access the gmail account settings. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/fwdandpop Set up forwarding to a new address for new mail not included in the archives.
You might be able to get some older mail to copy from local folders (or another account) to a new IMAP account folder. But batches of more than a few hundred at a time generally result in something going wrong.
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Tất cả các câu trả lời (3)
So, it all sort of worked.
Giải pháp được chọn
Here is my take. I personally have issues using Thunderbird synced data for archives where gmail is concerned as there is a more reliable way.
Create appropriate labels in Gmail for each year and get them applied to the gmail account using their mail filters.
Then toddle over to your Google takeout service and "takeout" all your labels as MBOX files. It will take a day or two, but you get to download everything in a zipped mbox format file.
Use a gmail filter to delete the account content once you are sure what you have is what you want.
Now you can add the mbox file using the import export tools add-on to Thunderbird's local folders. (Or if you understand enough just put the files into the Thunderbird profile. Quicker but requires more knowledge.)
They are your data stored locally and in no way associated with any particular account in Thunderbird. Access the gmail account settings. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/fwdandpop Set up forwarding to a new address for new mail not included in the archives.
You might be able to get some older mail to copy from local folders (or another account) to a new IMAP account folder. But batches of more than a few hundred at a time generally result in something going wrong.
.
Your solution of exporting by labels indeed feels more robust than mine, thank you!