Archive across folders by date

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brittont0
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Joined: February 10th, 2018, 4:48 pm

Archive across folders by date

Post by brittont0 »

Hi
I want to archive messages from a selection of folders, that are older than a number of days, but can't quite get it to work.

I have a gmail account (IMAP) and several folders in it where incoming mail is automatically sorted. I want to archive read email in all these folders to a local archive, preferably by clicking one 'Archive' button. I don't want to include messages in Gmail's 'All Mail" or "Deleted" folders.

I've read about Thunderbird's Archive function and am happy use it to archive by year/month and folder structure. What it doesn't seem to do is select all read messages across the folders I've identified that are older than the number of days I've specified.

I can use the search/find function to select the read messages older than the number of days, either for single folder or all folders, but not selected folders. But I can't seem to then archive these messages - archiving isn't one of the options and if I go back to the Thunderbird Message menu, its only messages selected in Thunderbird that get archived, not the (selected) messages in the search/find results.

Am I missing something or an add-on or extension that does what I want?

Cheers
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DanRaisch
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Re: Archive across folders by date

Post by DanRaisch »

The search system and the archive function are not integrated with each other in Thunderbird so each works independently of the other. You should be able to accomplish what you want using Thunderbird's filter system rather than the archive function. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Filters_%28Thunderbird%29

Also see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Archiving_your_e-mail
brittont0
Posts: 2
Joined: February 10th, 2018, 4:48 pm

Re: Archive across folders by date

Post by brittont0 »

Thanks for the suggestion Dan.

I've looked at using filters but they don't seem to do what I want. I can apply a filter when archiving but its rules say where to move the messages (a specified folder) whereas I want the archive function to do so.

I found the Awesome Auto Archive extension, which does more of what I want, but apart from enabling and disabling it I haven't found how to enable it to only be run manually.

Cheers
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DanRaisch
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Re: Archive across folders by date

Post by DanRaisch »

I haven't found how to enable it to only be run manually.
Well, the name is "Awesome AUTO Archive" so perhaps it's not intended to wait for the user to trigger it. You might try contacting the author to ask if that option is already present or if it could be added in a next release -- https://github.com/wangvisual/autoarchive
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