I’m somewhat of a pack-rat when it comes to old email.

While I don’t keep every deleted and sent item (unlike others I know), I have a pretty good archive of email that dates back until early 1998 in several Outlook PST files. Over time, I’ve found that keeping interesting links, documents, conversations, etc., in mail is one of the best ways store and easily find information. Using IMAP, it’s also a great way to keep things automatically synchronized between my mail ‘access points’: phone, laptop, web.

Additionally, the folder metaphor for mail organization broke down for me a long time ago – Now I just keep everything in a folder by year, and keep my Inbox relatively empty. Who cares how messages are organized? Using mail’s built in search (especially Spotlight) enables me to find things way faster than just looking around for a mail in a specific location. David Gelernter wrote (thanks to Michael for the link):

“If you have three pet dogs, give them names. If you have 10,000 head of cattle, don’t bother. Nowadays the idea of giving a name to every file on your computer is ridiculous.”

While talking about file systems, the same applies to mail.

Now that I’m on a Mac, having all that data locked up in .PST files left me with only one choice to move them forward: Using Outlook under Fusion, I cracked open those old dusty archives and dragged them into year ‘folders’ on my IMAP server. The process was incredibly easy, now I have to deal with a few winmail.dat files (TNEF Enough looks like it should do the trick).

What am I going to do with all that data? Frankly, I have no idea. It’s nice having it around and easily accessible, and it makes interesting reading to see what you were thinking about 8-10 years ago. Although, I think it’s safe to delete that Costco renewal email from 2000…