There are three general ways in which you can copy your mail:
Using a Mail Client
If you're using a mail client that allows you to configure more than one mail account or that has local folders, such as Thunderbird, you can copy mail into another account or into local folders.
-
Copying Mail Between Accounts
To copy mail from your Mathematical Sciences account into another account, configure the client so that it can access both accounts. Then, use whatever means your client provides to copy mail between folders.
-
Copying Mail to Local Folders
When you copy mail into local folders, the type of file used to store your mail depends upon the client you use. Some clients, such as Alpine, pine and Thunderbird, use mbox format, which is a common mail file format. In mbox format, all the messages in a folder are stored in one file, a text file, which you can read or edit with any text browser or editor. Other clients, such as Outlook, use their own proprietary file format, which may not be readable in a text-based utility or in other mail clients.
WARNING! Depending upon the mail client you are using, and also upon the operating system of the computer you are using, local folders may be stored in your home directory or on the local drive of the computer. The local drive of a CSG-managed computer is not backed up! If you store mail in local folders that are on your computer's local drive, then you will lose that mail if the computer's drive crashes. If you look at your mail client's configuration, you should be able to see where your client is storing local folders.
Using mailutil
You can use the mailutil command on RedHat Linux workstations to copy your mail from the mail server. mailutil will copy all the mail from a folder into a single file in mbox format.
To use mailutil, follow these steps:
- Login to a Linux workstation.
- Open a terminal window.
- At the command prompt, enter
mailutil copy \{mail.divms.uiowa.edu/tls/validate-cert/user=username\}foldername foldername
where username is your account username, and foldername is the name of the folder you want to copy. Use INBOX for the foldername if you want to copy messages from your inbox. (Note that you need to escape the curly brackets with backslashes.)
You may see many "Permission denied" messages during the copy. Just ignore them; they're the result of a harmless bug in mailutil.
For help with the mailutil command, see the online man page.
Archiving or Exporting Mail
Some mail clients, such as Outlook, allow you to archive or export mail to a file. The archive or export file may be in a proprietary format that is unreadable by anything other than the mail client. If you want to transfer mail to another account and you know you'll be using the same mail client, then archiving or exporting mail may work.
