Email Archiving Principles

• mailbox … user's mail storage area on a mail server, keeps messages in folders, limited size.
• mail client … (Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.) accesses mailbox via IMAP protocol (makes local copy of the mailbox on user’s computer).
• webmail client … accesses a mailbox via web browser
• email archiving … systematic approach to saving and protecting the data contained in e-mail messages so it can be accessed quickly at a later date

• Users must be aware of the limited size of their institutional mailbox.
• Regular maintaining of the mailbox is recommended (see below for details and hints).
• Users should make regular backup of their local archive folder

There are several ways to achieve this:

1. unnecessary messages wiping (after deleting empty the recycle bin folder)
2. bigger attachments detaching (sort emails by size and deliberately remove the biggest attachments)
3. move messages to your computer mail folder (archiving to local archive) and make backup of your archive regularly then

• check folders size (use webmail for this)
• remember to empty the recycle bin email folder
• preliminary classify messages by durability (assign a folder, mark, tag, etc.)
• continuously process nontopical, less important, temporary messages, e.g. sent copies with big attachments sorted by time, by size, filter (by tag, recipient etc.)

• You can archive messages by moving them to Local folders in your mail client (Thunderbird)
• Make immediately a fresh copy of the local archive to a different storage media (external disc, etc.)
• Be aware that your local archive is on your computer so its content is not accessible via webmail