This sounds too easy.

Simply create another user account.

On my pegasus mail system I have several user accounts

Each has a different file structure, but the PUBLIC folders remain

the same.

I would create a user name by year, for instance

If that gets too cumbersome you could install 2 copies of pegasus into different

directories and have each copy access different PUBLIC files.

This should get around the problem of two user files within the smae 

ddirectory pulling up ALL the public folders.

We are a subscribed Pegasus user, Aurora IT Systems AB in Sweden, and have been using Pegasus without major problems for many years. We have repeatedly requested assistance with, what we assume to be, a simple and recurring problem. Now we are asking the public forum for help, there are certainly many power users out there ;-)

Over the years we have generated a folder for every customer, and one for every supplier that sends us email. Thats thousands of FOLDERS . We also have a well-ordered archive tree for visitor logs from as far back as 1998

site visits -1999-Q1 -1999-Q4 ... 2007-Q2 etc. In this case its tens of thousands of mail items but relatively few actual folders (there are four 3-month periods in a year, thats the Q1..Q4 reference)

We simply MUST move this seldom used historical data to a second user (NOT folder) in order to speed up both searching and shut down of our main Pegasus installation  

The application hangs many times during shutdown, there is simply too much data, possibly being filtered due to our weak knowledge of correct filter use ?

Irrespective of the overload at shutdown issue, we MUST move all mail from the current user "MAINUSER" to a new user "OLDMAIL"  Better still, would be selective moving of all mail from 2001 to a new user . . .well guess, . . yes - right !  MAIL-2001, MAIL-2002  etc.

Its not rocket science, but it's essential for a professional user. Additionally, here in Sweden its THE LAW to keep commercial documents for minimum of 10 years, so deleting the files in not an option.

Friends; please carefully note that we do not require instructions to make a new folder marked archive, we have had that suggestion several times. We require a separate user which will naturally have the same tree structure as todays overloaded datadase. (same as drag and drop) The result must reduce the number of folders and data in the current year user.

Any suggestions and advice would be most appreciated.  

Aurora IT Systems AB in Sweden

http://www.aurora.se 

> We are a subscribed Pegasus user, Aurora IT Systems AB in
> Sweden, and have been using Pegasus without major problems
> for many years. We have repeatedly requested assistance with,
> what we assume to be, a simple and recurring problem. Now we
> are asking the public forum for help, there are certainly
> many power users out there ;-)
>
> Over the years we have generated a folder for every customer,
> and one for every supplier that sends us email. Thats
> thousands of FOLDERS . We also have a well-ordered archive
> tree for visitor logs from as far back as 1998
>
> site visits -1999-Q1 -1999-Q4 ... 2007-Q2 etc. In this case
> its tens of thousands of mail items but relatively few actual
> folders (there are four 3-month periods in a year, thats the
> Q1..Q4 reference)
>
> We simply MUST move this seldom used historical data to a
> second user (NOT folder) in order to speed up both searching
> and shut down of our main Pegasus installation  
>
> The application hangs many times during shutdown, there is
> simply too much data, possibly being filtered due to our weak
> knowledge of correct filter use ?
>
> Irrespective of the overload at shutdown issue, we MUST move
> all mail from the current user "MAINUSER" to a new user
> "OLDMAIL"  Better still, would be selective moving of all
> mail from 2001 to a new user . . .well guess, . . yes - right
> !  MAIL-2001, MAIL-2002  etc.
>
> Its not rocket science, but it's essential for a professional
> user. Additionally, here in Sweden its THE LAW to keep
> commercial documents for minimum of 10 years, so deleting the
> files in not an option.
>
> Friends; please carefully note that we do not require
> instructions to make a new folder marked archive, we have had
> that suggestion several times. We require a separate user
> which will naturally have the same tree structure as todays
> overloaded datadase. (same as drag and drop) The result must
> reduce the number of folders and data in the current year
> user.
>
> Any suggestions and advice would be most appreciated.  

I use an "Archive" user for this purpose.  Actually this user gets all mail from Mercury/32 using an always filter but you can do the same with an "Add mailbox to list" from WinPMail.

You create your archive folder in this added mailbox and then you move the messages from your current folder to this archive folder.  If you have a lot of mail then you can even create a user for each year called MAIL2002 and put all the mail for 2002 into this user account.  

Note:  You cannot move or copy folders between users, only messages.  
 
>
> Aurora IT Systems AB in Sweden
>
> http://www.aurora.se

Thanks for your advice Thomas. However I am not sure if you actually read (understood) my question.

>[citat:] we have ... one folder for every customer . . . one for each supplier . . .  that's >THOUSANDS of folders. [end citat]   and obviously many times more messages

>.. we also have a well ordered archive tree containing hundreds of folders containing >thousands of  documents.

I concur with you, as i already mentioned myself, that selective moving of documents from year 2000 to a new user with a similar name, and repeating for previous years would be the perfect solution, but HOW ?

finally I state:

>friends, please carefully note . . . . we require a new (archive)  user which will have the >same file structure as the current overloaded user.

>>You create your

archive folder in this added mailbox and then you move the messages

>>from your current folder to this archive folder." 

Do you really mean, put 100000+ messages in a root level folder . I must surely have missed something important here.? ?

>>Note:  You cannot move or copy folders between users, only messages. 

I regret if i have misunderstood your well intentioned advice, but i see no answer to my simple questions, or does your 'note' mean that it is not possible to move a complex tree structure to an external archive.

 In any case, i repeat my thanks for your time and efforts to assist.

 /Sandro

[quote user="aurora data recovery"]

Thanks for your advice Thomas. However I am not sure if you actually read (understood) my question.

>[citat:] we have ... one folder for every customer . . . one for each supplier . . .  that's >THOUSANDS of folders. [end citat]   and obviously many times more messages

 Understood.
 

>.. we also have a well ordered archive tree containing hundreds of folders containing >thousands of  documents.

I concur with you, as i already mentioned myself, that selective moving of documents from year 2000 to a new user with a similar name, and repeating for previous years would be the perfect solution, but HOW ?

finally I state:

>friends, please carefully note . . . . we require a new (archive)  user which will have the >same file structure as the current overloaded user.

>>You create your

archive folder in this added mailbox and then you move the messages

>>from your current folder to this archive folder." 

Do you really mean, put 100000+ messages in a root level folder . I must surely have missed something important here.? ?

No but you can use a directory for each folder, customer would be come a separate user for this purpose.

>>Note:  You cannot move or copy folders between users, only messages. 

I regret if i have misunderstood your well intentioned advice, but i see no answer to my simple questions, or does your 'note' mean that it is not possible to move a complex tree structure to an external archive.

Yes, you cannot move a complex to an external archive.  You can move the entire home directory by copying the files in the home mail directory to a different user (one user for each customer) directory.  You can then run the program as that customer and then delete the folders and tree structure that do not appy to that customer. 

 In any case, i repeat my thanks for your time and efforts to assist.

 /Sandro

[/quote]

Good grief this is a pain in the rear to handle in-line questions without quoting.   I hope you can make sense of it.

[quote user="aurora data recovery"]We are a subscribed Pegasus user, Aurora IT Systems AB in Sweden, and have been using Pegasus without major problems for many years. We have repeatedly requested assistance with, what we assume to be, a simple and recurring problem. [/quote]

If you mean that you've been sending mail to the subscriber@pmail.gen.nz account and not getting replies, then I apologize profusely. I've only quite recently discovered that at some point I made a change to the filtering on that account and made a total mess of it, with the result that a significant portion of the mail that has been sent to that address in the last couple of months has been getting deleted unread. This is most embarrassing, and I'm quite upset about it. I stress that it is user error, not program error though.

[quote]
Over the years we have generated a folder for every customer, and one for every supplier that sends us email. Thats thousands of FOLDERS . We also have a well-ordered archive tree for visitor logs from as far back as 1998

site visits -1999-Q1 -1999-Q4 ... 2007-Q2 etc. In this case its tens of thousands of mail items but relatively few actual folders (there are four 3-month periods in a year, thats the Q1..Q4 reference)

We simply MUST move this seldom used historical data to a second user (NOT folder) in order to speed up both searching and shut down of our main Pegasus installation  

The application hangs many times during shutdown, there is simply too much data, possibly being filtered due to our weak knowledge of correct filter use ?
[/quote]

I'm really not sure why there would be long delays at shutdown - Pegasus Mail doesn't really do that much on termination. I *assume* the problem is that it's taking a long time to write HIERARCH.PM, but that seems relatively unlikely, since it's really only a text file and even with many thousands of folders I wouldn't expect it to take more than a few seconds. I doubt you're on track with the filtering idea - filtering only works at fairly specific times, and the only filtering rule that would be likely to fire on shutdown would be the newmail folder-close rules (which you quite possibly don't even have defined - not that many people use them, I suspect). Even then, for that to cause a significant delay, you'd have to have many thousands of messages in your New Mail folder - the number of other folders you have would have no bearing on it.

The point about archiving is perfectly fair, and I am working on it at present (or at least, I will be once Mercury/32 is finally released), by developing an archiving/import/export tool for the program.

[quote]
Irrespective of the overload at shutdown issue, we MUST move all mail from the current user "MAINUSER" to a new user "OLDMAIL"  Better still, would be selective moving of all mail from 2001 to a new user . . .well guess, . . yes - right !  MAIL-2001, MAIL-2002  etc.
[/quote]

At this point, you would have to do this at the Windows level, by manually copying the folder files. A folder consists of two files with the same name part, one with the extension .PMM, the other with the extension .PMI. Moving both files from one user's mailbox directory to another user's mailbox directory using Windows Explorer (or a Command Prompt's MOVE command) effectively moves the entire folder between users. It's tedious and manual, but it's the only solution I have for you right now, sorry.

Cheers!

-- David --

On the campus system I run, I have about 700 users. Our system

handles between 1000 and 5000 messages a day. All of the messages are

copied into an archive folder and after midnight I run a script that

moves all of the messages of a certain day into a folder for that day.

At the begining of the month the daily message folders for the previous

month, together with the logs files for the month are burned to DVD and

stored in a safe.

From the SYSTEM logs (which I keep zipped by

month on the server)  I can track down any message (from the time

I started the process) by date, time and size and retrieve it from the

relevant DVD within minutes.

Hello David,

Its a great pleasure to see your name on a recent reply concerning our shut-down problems. I have never had the opportunity to thank you personally for your excellent program Pegasus, which, as you may have understood, we have used for almost an entire decade.  Well : Thanks David, you can be proud of your timeless effort for the IT community.  Any form of apology concerning support is entirly unnecessary, we have only praise for your product, and support your efforts to keep Pegasus alive.

To specifics: I think that you have fully understood my ORIGINAL posting, and further precision is unnecessary.  When some well meaning contributers suggested that archiving in a tree structure was impossible, I admit to feeling rather surprised and dissapointed.

In the Data Recovery business we learn that nothing is impossible, some things just take a little longer, and often simple "thinking outside the box"

1. Not knowing the exact purpose of all the files in the /mail/User catalog, we copied Everything from /mail/User to /mail/Archive.
2. We then determined that one file at the /mail/ level called "pmail.usr" was no less that a simple text document to which we added the row "A;Archive;Archive of logs and email" (ignore Swedish language please)
3. less that 5 minuits later, we started Pegasus, selected Archive and saw, to our great satisfaction, an entire, fully functioning archive of all our email to the present day. The data was in our original tree structure, as you probable realize.  So much for "impossible.."
4. Shortly thereafter, we started the Original User account and started very severe surgery. Unfortunately, removing entire trees was not possible, but we concur that safety is better that speed and resulting human errors.  An hour later we had a clean "current year user"
   

You are correct David. It wasn't the problem ( . . . I hope that every one is enjoying the saga) There are no close down filters as you suspected.

The shutdown is still between 3 and 4 minutes AND MUST NOT BE DISTURBED. Pushing the soft power-down via power switch is most certainly NOT an option.  

The archive, not surprisingly, still takes 3-4 minutes, but so does the slim-lined user.

Now for an interesting observation, my own 'private' email has a dedicated user /Tony/ containing several hundred mails. Shutdown time: instant, never a problem.  Could spam halter be a factor ? Our company receives disproportionate amounts of unsolicited email, spam and virus payloads. Probably a large amount are initiated by compeditors since we have, to our knowledge, no disgruntled customers.

We have a rather large file called words4.db3 about 94Mb; 25 or so PPM files from 40Mb to 90Mb and literally hundreds of smaller PPM files some as small as 7Kb.

Another observation; we have about ten empty folders that cannot be deleted, the message:

Tray is not empty, You have asked to delete a tray file which still contains folders.

However there are no folders or anything else in the file trays. Maybe some sort of indexing or  tidying up operation id failing and timeing out ?

I can post an image of the actual (windows) folders, indicating files and file sizes if you consider it relevent.

Thanks again to everyone for previous ideas.

/Tony

 2285 folders - startup about 10 seconds , entirely acceptable