Third-party email client - Where is my archive folder?

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Level 1

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Third-party email client - Where is my archive folder?

I've been using the Unibox email client for a few years and love it. Our email system is using Register(dot)com and they want us to move to a different, modern platform. We are at a point where we need to archive previous emails but no one can find where these emails are stored locally. We want to ensure we can access the archive before we go willy-nilly deleting or losing stuff.

I'm sure this isn't Unibox-specific but I do not see her/his folder might be hiding. Unibox is quite sparse on technical details. I'm not the IT guy (we don't really have one, the owner's boyfriend is and he can only help us out in limited amounts of helpfulness). We are a small team and all work remotely. This hide and seek for this archive is driving us nuts. I'm thinking this should all be accessible through Register and not be dependent on any specific end user. But I'm not IT.

Any ideas as to where this archive might be hiding? I'm on a 2013 Trashcan Pro stuck using Big Sur (a whole other issue not related to this, lol)

My email client is UniboxApp(dot)com

Mac Pro

Posted on Jan 24, 2022 12:25 PM

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Answer 1

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James Brickley

Level 5

5,692 points

Feb 6, 2022 10:09 AM in response to JKN1

It looks like the company behind Unibox hasn't posted to their Twitter feed since 2017. The App is 3 years old and hasn't been updated. App review are stating their isn't any support they can obtain from the company. This appears to be abandonware.

Shame, looks like a decent App for the most part with some interesting features.

I would look in the users home directory ~/Library/Containers and look for a folder that has Unibox in the name. Mac App Store Apps are typically sandboxed in the Containers folder and the archives are possibly located somewhere down a tree of folders. Accessing the data might be difficult, see if there's an export option in the App. It's possible they stuffed everything into a proprietary SQLite database which would require someone with deep database knowledge to access the contents and dump it to something more useful.

However, if the "Archive" folder is a sub-folder within a mailbox then the email is actually hosted out at your email providers email server. If the email account connection details are IMAP then for sure the data is on the server. If the connection details are POP, well that would be unfortunate. POP doesn't leave the email on the server, it downloads it into the email client. POP is like you went to your mailbox and emptied it when checking for email. While IMAP downloads a copy of the email but leaves it on the server and that allows sync between multiple devices such as an iPhone and a Mac. You delete email on IMAP on one device and it's gone when you look at the mailbox with the second device. Let's hope you are using an IMAP account such as Gmail or iCloud.

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Answer 2

JKN1 Author

Level 1

43 points

Feb 7, 2022 7:26 AM in response to James Brickley

Thank you for the reply. The problem turned out to be with our commercial domain (Register,com). They totally screwed up when moving servers or some such. almost a month later and it still isn't correct. They refunded our charges and we are looking for another host this week. At the advice of my personal IT guru, I connected my work email to my iCloud personal accounts so I could at least get my work mail. I then archived my work email history to that. Its not in a convenient folder though, its splashed all over in thousands of semi-hidden dated subfolders.

Thanks for letting me know about Unibox being a zombie client. I've looked for a client with similar features but have not seen anything with such a clean interface and conversation-centric approach to presenting your emails. Everything else piles on calendar/virtual meeting rooms/social account add-ons/etc. I don't need any of that. Some folks do and that's fine but not for my workflow.

Thanks again.

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Third-party email client - Where is my archive folder?

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