After 15 years of using Gmail, I'm transitioning back to managing my email locally—with solid backups, of course. Given the way things are shifting in the digital space (particularly around identification requirements and online access), it seems simpler to do a Takeout of just my Inbox and Sent mail separately. At this rate, how long before Google starts holding Gmail accounts hostage unless we provide ID?
On Wed, 6 Aug 2025 at 02:30, Tomas Kuchta <[email protected]> wrote: > > I do that kind of large volume email shifting in Evolution. So far, it has > been able to digest pretty large email volumes - xGBs for sure. > > Things get easier after splitting it to smaller mail folders - say by year > and message type or month. > > I am accessing all that email pile by Evolution again on local NFS path. > Now that I am describing it - most of my email pile access is by Recoll > search these days. I have maybe 60+GB Xapian DB indexing all that and more. > I recently moved it to SSD filer volume - I was sick of listening to 2-3 > hours long indexing or backup crawls on the disk array. > > If I'd want to use email client from A or G company, I'd definitely stand > up IMAP server and push it there from Evolution; then point those clients > at my IMAP server. I have managed to push some 30+GB to now deceased Helm > IMAP email appliance. The guys running Helm were the most ethical cloud > entrepreneurs I have ever came across. I hope that they are doing well. > > I had pretty bad experience with all sorts of conversion tools. > > Hope that helps, > -T > > On Tue, Aug 5, 2025, 21:02 Russell Senior <[email protected]> wrote: > > > My first thought is to dump it all into a Maildir-backed IMAP server, > > in which case you can bifurcate your problem into separate repository > > vs client problems. Apple Mail will happily talk to an IMAP server, as > > will most mail clients. > > > > How new mail lands is another consideration. > > > > I'll admit I have not thought a lot about this, so maybe there is > > another obviously better solution. I have a postfix/dovecot set up, > > but I read the mail from that using Emacs/Gnus and it has its own > > Maildir, so mail doesn't sit very long in dovecot. > > > > -- > > Russell Senior > > [email protected] > > > > On Tue, Aug 5, 2025 at 2:49 PM Paul Heinlein <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > On Tue, 5 Aug 2025, James Tobin wrote: > > > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > > I have a large MBOX (14gb). Trying to import into Apple mail. This > > > > is hopeless. I tried Thunderbird which seems to maybe work but does > > > > not give me a sent folder. Any ideas? I have not yet tried splitting > > > > the mbox into smaller files. > > > > > > 14G? (Cue Foreigner): He's a mbox hero... > > > > > > I long, long ago moved my messages to maildir (one message per file) > > > format, but I suspect my existing mbox file was no more than several > > > dozen MB at that point. > > > > > > There are scripts for mbox-to-maildir conversion, but I don't know > > > that Apple mail would have any better luck with maildir. > > > > > > -- > > > Paul Heinlein > > > [email protected] > > > 45°22'48" N, 122°35'36" W > >
