Mail Saver - 3.8.2

I had version 3.4 of this before, which had better instructions! But this is a handy program that stops Mail doing that "oops, I'm full, I'm going to lose all your mail" trick. If that hasn't happened to you yet, be warned, it is a complete pain when it does, and Mail will give you NO warning.

After you've done all the install stuff, as in the "Help" instructions, choose or make a mailbox with the e-mails you want to back up: this mailbox will be emptied into Trash as each mail is backed up. Select this mailbox: mail is now your front app, which it HAS TO BE for Mail Saver to work; the new instructions don't really spell this out. Then click-and-hold on the icon in the dock, which brings up the usual dock options plus mailsaver, help, and spotmail. Got to mailsaver and release. It'll then (give it a moment) ask where you want to save the mail in that mailbox to an you can choose or create a file as normal, and then set it going. You might need to launch it several times depending on how much is in your selected mailbox (it does 100 per launch), but trust it, it will just trundle away in sequence until they are all done. That's it. Now, or when you've backed up your disk, you can empty the archived mails from the Mail program Trash. Repeat until satisfied.

I'd never use the "action" folder or much automation on this, since I never want to archive "everything up to today" and tend to keep my archives in "family 2005" "family 2006" etc folders, so I make and delete mailboxes to back up as I need them. A bit more laborious, and perhaps not using the program in the fullest or most elegant way, but it does what I need it to do, and it seems a very reasonable price to prevent a major problem.