Mail Steward Pro

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MailSteward Pro ($99.95)

“MailSteward Pro will automatically select all of your Apple Mail app email accounts to be archived, and create an empty MySQL database named “myemaildb”. So all you have to do is click on the archive button, and MailSteward Pro will begin copying your email into the database.”

I have been a fan and user of Mail Steward since I first reviewed it back in March 2006. I am a backup junkie and use it all the time, and have found it useful when moving data from one Mac to another, especially when I have only wanted to move certain mailboxes.

One of the greatest strengths of Mail Steward is its flexibility, both in terms of what you store, how you find it and what you do with it. Initially I saw it as ‘just’ a means of backing up my emails, but over time I grew to appreciate that it was pretty cool having found an archived email to actually be able to do something with it or with the attachment.

To be perfectly honest Mail Steward is more than adequate for the vast majority of users, and I include myself in that broad spectrum, but for those with more advanced requirements, say accessing records while away from their main Mac, or sharing on a network, or with a requirement to store their emails off site, then it is a pretty clever and very reliable option.

To use Mail Steward Pro you will need a MySQL server setting up, which is straight forward enough, but I would suggest not for the novice, or the typical home user, which is probably why it is called Mail Steward “Pro”!

So if you haven’t already you will need to download and install a MySQL database server software, which is available from the MySQL.com download site. This will install itself in the Systems Preferences where you can use it to stop and start the MySQL Server.

you should also set the root password for MySQL:

cd /usr/local/mysql/bin
./mysqladmin -u root password ‘new-password’

In order to archive email containing large attachments into MySQL, the MySQL maximum allowed packet size needs to be set large enough to accommodate the attachment blobs.

[mysqld]
max_allowed_packet=200M

Next up you will connect to the MySQL Server, so you need to know your Host, User and Password details:

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After that it is the same as the regular Mail Steward. You have a number of options in the settings:

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And the very useful scheduling option:

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Features

  • Works seamlessly with the Mac OS X Mail app to archive all your email in a relational database.
  • Will import most mbox files from other email clients such as Microsoft Entourage.
  • Works with all locally stored POP, .Mac, and IMAP email accounts.
  • Select emails from archive by date range and keywords in the To, From, Subject, Mailbox, or Body fields.
  • Sort by date, To, From, Subject, or unique ID.
  • Print email list, or individual email, or all emails in a list.
  • Save email list, or individual email, or all emails to a text file.
  • Reply to individual emails.
  • Add your own tags to email & import MailTags©.
  • Search attachments, such as word processing documents, that contain any text.
  • Schedule MailSteward Pro to archive your email automatically.
  • Export emails to a tab-delimited text file, an mbox file, or an SQL file.
  • All email folders are left undisturbed.
  • Options to store attachments, HTML, and enriched text, as well as plain text.
  • Keeps a copy of the raw source of the email.
  • Native Cocoa application that supports OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or greater.
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