archiving Mac Mail emails per year

Type 2011 (or whatever year) into the search field, select Date, then select All for the search range. You can then select all and move them somewhere.

You could also create a date range in a Smart Mailbox that will collect all in that range. Then, move them to a folder somewhere.

What it sounds like you want is to take a single hiearchy of folders and duplicate that hierarchy into folders for each year, then go through every email and move them to the correct space in the correct year. That might be possible with writing an applescript, but I don't think I could do it.

Then I would just suggest making Smart Mailboxes for each Year. You could then view the ones for that year, but they wouldn't be in the structure you have, just listed as part of the year. You could also create a smart mailbox for each year and archive mailbox. The criteria would be Message is in Mailbox ______ and Date Received is in the Date Range _______ to ________

Or, if you want to view the ones for a particular year in a particular archive folder, just select the folder and type the year in the search field. Make sure that mailbox is selected in the search range tabs at the top of the message window.

As I looked back at my test Smart Mailbox, you could use something like that to group them all and then move them into the new Year hierarchy which would sort of semi-automate the process.

Build your 2010 hierarchy and then create the 2010 smart mailbox for a particular folder in your archive. Select all in the smart mailbox and move to the new 2010 folder of same name. Edit the smart mailbox for each folder and repeat. Sounds a bit tedious, still, depending on how many subfolders you have and how many years you go back.

And more ideas. I created a 2010 Smart Mailbox that got all emails for 2010. I then typed in one of my Archive folder names in the Search box and selected Mailbox as the criteria type from the search dropdown. So, for instance, if I wanted to look at my online orders from 2010, I selected the 2010 smart mailbox, and then typed Online Orders into the search field. When the various matching criteria popped up, I selected Mailboxes.

This method would allow you to keep your Archive grouping neatly organized and not have the hierarchy duplicated each year. Smart Mailboxes can be grouped by dragging them on top of one another, so you could keep the Year mailboxes neetly organized, also.