where is e-mail kept?

General discussion about Zimbra Desktop.
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Gregm
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu May 20, 2021 2:21 pm

where is e-mail kept?

Post by Gregm »

Earlham College uses Zimbra as its e-mail structure. I was Academic Dean at Earlham for ten years, and consequently my e-mail files are pretty large, taking up over 9 GB of storage space. What I would like to do is to create a backup archive of all of my mail, then delete from the active server all of the official mail from my years as Dean, and go forward with a much smaller active mailbox.

I have a version of Zimbra Desktop on my computer, and it appears to have a complete backup of my active Zimbra account. That is, it appears to have stored somewhere on my computer, offline, all of my e-mail since 2007.

What I want to do is to take the Zimbra Desktop that I currently have on my computer and convert it into an archive. That is, I want to use it to back up my current Zimbra files and then permanently take it offline. Then I want to download a new copy of Zimbra desktop on my computer and use it as a backup for a new, leaner, Zimbra online.

So, here are my questions:

(a) where does Zimbra Desktop have all of my 14 years’ worth of e-mail filed? The Program Files (x86)/ Zimbra/Zimbra Desktop folder appears to be 218 mb in size, but my Zimbra online indicates that the 14 years’ worth of e-mail is over 9 GB in size. Do you know in what file all that e-mail is residing?

(b) I know where the control is on my Zimbra Desktop to take it offline. I assume that if I took it offline I could then delete whatever I wanted to from my active account on the server, and I could shrink my Zimbra account from over 9 GB to under 2 GB easily enough. Is that correct?

(c) The problem, though, I think, is that if I ever touched that Zimbra Desktop button again and set it back to online, then all of the files that I had deleted from my server account would similarly be deleted from the Zimbra Desktop. Is that correct?

(d) So the answer seems to be to rename and relocate my Zimbra Desktop files, maybe calling it Historical Zimbra. It would then be about 9GB in size and would have 14 years’ worth of e-mail in a static archive. By “static archive” here I mean that it would not update anymore, it would simply be an archive of my mail from 2007 to 2021. If I did that THEN I could download a new copy of Zimbra Desktop, and link it with my (smaller) active Zimbra account. It would automatically back up everything in the active account, which would not include any of my Dean mail, and life could move forward.
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