Pesky Questions About Mail Archive

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Good Day To All!

I've search for the answers to a couple of archive questions, but managed to get myself confused. If you all don't mind, I would like to verify a couple of items with you folks.

Background-
I had one of my SBC (Yahoo) mail accounts hijacked despite the giant and complex password. Yahoo would not let me change my password, but oddly I was able to make the account inactive. They said I had to go through AT&T and AT & T said I had to go through Yahoo. Goofy, but true! (Hello GMAIL, Nice to meet you!)

Since I had to euthanize the account, I saved the InBox and Sent folders using Mail App's (really easy & quick) Archive function. I would like to remove the defunct account from Mail App completely. I also would like to move the archives to a DVD disk & erase them from hard drive on my Mac

I was going to make a giant docx or txt file with copy-paste, but since I will only need to view an old message once in a great while, re-importing the mailboxes isn't too much bother.

The Questions-
If I remove the old account completely using Mail Preferences, will the archives still open OK when I import them back to On My Mac?
Will the attachments still be there?
Is moving the file off the local hard drive OK, too?

I do have an automatic Crash Plan off site back up account as well. But, I think if I restore the Mail folder, my existing Mail boxes get over-written. I'm too chicken to try.

Just wanted to verify before I nuke the account.
Thanks Very Much!
Paul

PS: I'm using OS X 10.6.8 and Mail is Version 4.6 on a id-2006 MacBook Pro
 

chscag

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The Questions-
If I remove the old account completely using Mail Preferences, will the archives still open OK when I import them back to On My Mac?
Will the attachments still be there?
Is moving the file off the local hard drive OK, too?

First, let me say that I can't stand Yahoo and am beginning to feel the same way about AT&T after the hard time they gave my son regarding his iPhone account.

The archived mail "should" open OK after importing back to your Mac. But you need to be careful, here's why: If the Mail app has been updated in the meantime, you may find yourself locked out with the old mail format.

Attachments may or may not survive. I would back them up separately just in case.

Moving the files off your local hard drive is fine and should make no difference.

Personally what I do is save my long term archived mail to text and keep it in a special folder on an external hard drive. I also have clone of that hard drive for safety.
 
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Thank You for your help, Chscag.

That was a good point you made about keeping the text backup. I'll do that before I nuke the mailbox.

AT&T had to go. Too many problems as the ISP. The final straw was when they started charging me 20 cents every time they sent my AT&T cell phone a text message advertising their stuff. (They send a lot of texts, too).

The old AT&T mail account automatically became a 'free' Yahoo account that is Mail App compatible when I terminated AT&T. But, as I understood it, one could use a brute force attack to 'stumble' on passwords. No 3 Strikes & You're Out limit. Lots of people on the machine tool groups I belong to got hijacked, too. Thankfully, I always took the messages off the server right away and kept no address book at Yahoo. This way, none of my recipients or senders got spammed by "me". (I hope)

Thanks Again for your idea about the text backup. I love text files.Nothing seems to ever go wrong, even with those I made in the 1980's on an 8088 machine.
Enjoy Today!
Paul
 

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