Prevent data loss when deleting unused Mail accounts

Oct 07, '04 10:29:00AM

Contributed by: bmccaff

If you decide to stop checking a particular email account with Mail.app, be sure to move all messages out of that account's main folder on Mail.

When you delete the account from the Preferences pane, the folder will be deleted and all of your messages will be lost. You'll get no warning that this is about to happen

I found this out when I migrated to a new ISP for email and deleted my old account. Nine months' worth of mail (1200 messages) gone without any warning!

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one, and don't intend to do so! Although the logic makes some sense (delete an account, delete that account's inbox), there really should be a warning: "This account has messages in its inbox; would you like to move them elsewhere prior to deleting?" or somesuch. So be warned -- move any email you'd like to keep into another Mail folder before you delete the account. And ... back up the Mail folder on your hard drive regularly (it's in your user's Library folder).]

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