Download email files/program to read?

[cosmorphis]

Hello everyone!

I have a client who wants save every email on the server. Well, his space is filling up fast. I want to do a dump of all emails soon, but I know he is going to ask, "How can I view them on my computer, if need be?" Well, is there some sort of Windows viewer program that can do just that? If I download all his emails from the folders on the Linux server, can I give them to him in that state, along with directions to view locally? I can open them up in a text editor, and see the content, but I know he won't be happy with that.

Thanks!

[eLIANT]

I'd start by finding out *why* he wants to leave them on the server.

- He may be misinformed.
- He may not want to spend money on client software.
- He may think of the server as a more secure/reliable platform for email storage
- etc.

See? Your solution will spring from the info he gives you.

[striddy]

Or you could charge the customer for more space.

[cosmorphis]

We are currently creating copies of all ingoing and outgoing email, and dumping them into an archive@domain.com. He wants to monitor everyone's communication, and keep all emails for liability purposes. I am thinking striddy's suggestion is the easiest for now. Give him a nice chunk of space, and anything beyond that will cost extra. Once he hits the max, either buy more space, or start deleting old stuff. Somebody suggested having all emails get forwarded to a gmail account, but I would like to have more local control. I just thought it might be easy to do a raw dump of the emails, from the Linux server, give him the files, and then he could pull them up on his Windows machine with some kind of viewer.

[cosmorphis]

Well, I just discovered that if I download the raw email from my VPS Linux on to my PC, I can open it up just fine in Thunderbird. I just go to File > Open > Saved Message, then change Mail Files to All Files, select the file and voila! After all, the raw email is just a text file anyway. Now to find some sort of import plugin, that can do this automatically with Outlook.

[cosmorphis]

Okay, I know I am answering my own questions here, but I thought it would be good in case someone else wants to do the same. So I figure, I'll leave all the emails on the server. If he ever wants to get them all on his computer, I'll first 1) download a copy of the raw files to my local machine 2) then tell him to create a pop connection to the account, then he can download them all to his Outlook. Now, we have a hard backup, plus he has them all in his Outlook.