Postbox
To archive emails from a local or portable Postbox installation, you must specify the appropriate Postbox profile and set the appropriate settings if necessary. Once a profile has been created, it can be edited at any time.
If you want to archive emails from a portable Postbox installation, please note the instructions for using a portable Postbox installation at the end of this chapter.
The "Archive Postbox" window is separated in several tabs, which allows a simple and intuitive operation.
Profile Information
On the Profile Information tab, you can select the appropriate Postbox installation from which emails should be archived. Basically, it is only necessary to select the Postbox profile in order to be able to archive emails from a local or portable Postbox installation so the other tabs do not necessarily have to be configured.
Postbox Profile
Select the appropriate Postbox profile, from which emails should be archived. All existing profiles are listed here.
Profile name
After selecting the appropriate profile, you can enter a profile name here.
Email Folders
By default, all folders of your Postbox installation are included in the archive, but you can also choose to archive only specific folders of your installation.
Archive all folders
Determines that all available folders of the specified installation should be archived.
Archive specific folders
Determines that only certain folders of the specified installation should be archived. The folders are selected by clicking on the "Select folders" link, which opens a new window for folder selection.
In the folder selection window, you can include the selected folder by activating the selection box of the corresponding folder. The "Include Subfolders" option also allows you to specify whether any existing subfolders of the selected folder should also be included. To exclude a folder from the archive, simply deselect the corresponding selection box.
After you have selected all the desired folders, you can confirm your selection by clicking on the OK button, so that your selection will be applied.
After clicking the OK button in the folder selection window, MailShelf will automatically fill in the fields "Folders to be included" and "Folders to be excluded" based on your selection with the corresponding folder paths.
Folders to be included
Specifies the folders of the specified mailbox that should be archived.
Folders to be excluded
Specifies the folders of the specified mailbox that should not be archived.
Please note that you can select folders by clicking the "Select folders" link. However, the corresponding folders can also be entered manually in the "Folders to be included" and "Folders to be excluded" fields.
Please ensure that the entered folder names or folder paths are 100% correct and accurate, as they can not be processed otherwise.
In order to avoid any errors, we recommend that you select the folders using the "Select folders" option. This makes sure you are on the safe side when selecting folders.
All entered folders must either end with "\*" or "\", where the parameter "\*" determines that the specified folder and any existing subfolders should be archived. The "\" parameter determines that only the actual folder, but not its subfolders should be archived. Please enter the parameters without quotation marks (").
Filter
By default, all available emails of the specified installation are archived, but you can also specify which emails should not be archived.
Don't archive spam messages
Specifies that emails detected as spam or junk messages should not be archived. This option can help keep your email archive small and clean, but it also slows down the archiving process as each email to be archived is checked for spam and junk characteristics so the process can be very time-intensive. Therefore, activating this option should be well-considered.
Please also note that this option depends on the spam filter settings you have set. If you did not enable spam or junk email detection options in the spam filter settings, the "Don't archive spam messages" option will not be considered during the archiving process and junk emails are being archived. Therefore, please remember to set spam filter settings accordingly.
Don't archive messages that are blacklisted
Specifies that emails that match the set blacklist criteria should not be archived. This option can help protect your email archive from unwanted emails, but it can slow down the archiving process slightly, since each email to be archived is compared to the blacklist before archiving.
Don't archive read messages
Specifies that emails that are marked as read in the specified mailbox should not be archived so that only those -mails that are marked as unread in the specified mailbox are archived. This option can slow down the archiving process very slightly.
Only archive messages that are older than
Determines that only those emails should be archived, which are within a certain period of time or which have been sent or received at a certain time.
Date
Determines the date and time to be considered for emails. The corresponding date and time can be selected from the calendar selection fields. After determining the date and time, only those emails which are older than the set date and time are archived.
Range
Determines the time period for emails to be considered. The corresponding period of time may be selected by the corresponding selection fields, e.g. "1 weeks". After determining the time period, only those emails which are older than the specified period are archived.
Miscellaneous
The Miscellaneous tab allows you to specify advanced options for the archiving process.
Dynamic archiving
Determines that all emails are dynamically archived, which means that remote content, e.g. images and scripts are not embedded in the archived email, so this remote content must be manually loaded in the email view.
Dynamic archiving is the default method, which is also the fastest as well as storage-saving archiving method.
Static archiving
Determines that emails are archived statically, which means that external content, e.g. images and scripts are embedded in the archived email so that this remote content do not need to be manually loaded in the email view.
When statically archiving an email, the corresponding email is checked for remote content during the archiving process, which is then downloaded from the internet (if available) at the same time so that this content is embedded directly into the email to be archived.
Please note that static archiving will slow down the archiving process as every remote content of the corresponding email is downloaded from the internet to your local system. Depending on how large the corresponding remote content is, this can slow the archiving process enormously and noticeably.
Furthermore, it should be taken into consideration that external content may not be available at all and thus can not be embedded at all. Especially with very old emails, it is not uncommon that the corresponding contents were deleted by the corresponding server meanwhile.
In this case, this will also slow down the archiving process enormously since the corresponding external content could not be found and downloaded and thus ultimately skipped through MailShelf, which would then dynamically archive the email.
Therefore, activating this option should be well-considered.
Allow duplicates in archive
Determines that email duplicates should also be archived in the archive, but not in the same archive folder.
By default, all email duplicates in the archive are skipped, so that the same email is only archived once. However, when you enable this option, you can also archive email duplicates, which may be in the same archive, even if they are already in a different archive folder within the same archive.
Please note that an archive folder can contain one and the same email only once. Therefore, email duplicates which are located in the same archive folder will not be archived by activating this option.
User Assignments
You can assign the profile to specific MailShelf users so that you can control which user is accessing the profile. If there is no specific user assignment in the multi-user mode, only administrators can access the profile. A profile is not limited to one user and can be assigned to more than one user at a time.
The user overview lists all currently created MailShelf users so that the user can be assigned quickly and easily by simply activating the user's selection box.
A user assignment already assigned can be withdrawn by deactivating the corresponding selection box. Users can be added and edited in the user management section.
Please note that the "User Assignments" tab is only displayed if you are running MailShelf in the Multi-User Environment and you are logged on as an administrator.
Instructions for using a portable Postbox installation
MailShelf is also able to archive emails from a portable Postbox installation, provided that the corresponding portable Postbox installation is a portable installation created by zebNet.
As a MailShelf user, zebNet provides you with a free toolset, which allows you to create a portable Postbox installation, which can then be used to archive your emails through MailShelf. The free toolset for creating a portable Postbox installation is available here.
In addition, MailShelf can also be used to archive emails from portable Postbox installations created with zebNet Backup for Postbox.
After you have selected the function to archive a portable Postbox installation, you will be prompted to select the location of the portable Postbox installation. Please select the folder where the Postbox installation is installed.
By default the portable Postbox installation is created in the "Postbox Portable" folder, which contains the following folders and files:
Of course, you may have renamed the default folder "Postbox Portable", so you will need to search and select the appropriate folder.
As a rule of thumb, you should always select the folder in which the folder "App", "Data" and the file "Postbox Portable.exe" is located. If this folder is not selected, you will not be able to access the portable installation.
Please make sure that you select the main directory where the above folders and files are located.