Ted,

To revert to your original question where you stated that "folder was still
there!!!", the only situation where it could 'appear' to be there is if you
had moved the .PMM or .PMM/.PMI pair out of your Home directory while Pmail
was still running: in that case it would still have appeared in Folders but,
if you had tried to open it, then Pmail would have put up a message about
the folder being damaged, followed, in a few seconds, by crashing.
I'm convinced that you mistakenly copied it from the Home mailbox instead of
moving it.

If you had moved it out of the Home mailbox while Pmail was closed then on
reopening Pmail it would no longer be listed in the Folders screen: it would
still be listed in HIERARCH.PM but with its title replaced by
Name_Unavailable.
If you then close Pmail, move the file(s) back into the Home directory and
reopen Pmail then it will re-appear in Folders in its former position in the
hierarchy with its former title.

Back to archiving methods: I like to think that the method I proposed, and
use, has considerable advantages over yours apart from being a bit tedious 
to set up.

1. Provided that you keep the archive mailbox disconnected, except when you
need to access it, then the archived files are effectively, as you put it,
"outside of Pegasus".

2. Folders in the archive are readily identifiable by their titles instead of
unintelligible file names and can be opened in Pmail enabling messages to be 
read, copied (including back to the Home mailbox), replied to etc.

3. The archive can be searched for text: that is not normally possible in
your method if any messages contain Mime(Base 64 encoded) sections.
Warning: I don't know if it's a quirk of my setup but Pmail's "Search all
folders in the selected mailbox" doesn't work for added mailboxes: even if
an added mailbox is highlighted before invoking search it still searches in
the Home mailbox! "Select one or more specific folders to search" does work.

4. Jerry's concern, which I think is about Unique IDs, is not applicable
because folders and trays are not moved between mailboxes.

Bob

I've got so many emails stored (some from as far back as the mid-1990's), that I've decided to move some of them out of PMail and store them on another hard drive (thus speeding Pegasus up).  Because the name I give a folder doesn't show on my hard drive by the same name, I highlighted, within Pegasus, one such folder and found the folder information window.  This showed a "PMM" file as the i.d. I was looking for.  I then located the PMM file (via my file manager software), and moved it to another hard drive (and then deleted the original copy that was in PMail).  A check of Pegasus showed that the folder was still there!!!

Can someone explain what I'm doing wrong and how to overcome this problem so what I want to do will be accomplished??

Thanks 

Message folders as displayed are a pair of files, *.pmm for data and *.pmi index of same name. They can only be viewed as folders from within Pegasus Mail program. You can *copy* the file pair ok but you would still need to have a copy of Pegasus Mail on the storage drive  to actually  use it. Restoration from storage drive to working current copy also has pitfalls and recquires some careful attention to refesh the display and rebuild current hierarch.pm file also while winpm-32 is closed and then display will be rebuilt on restart. Any trays or tray structure will be lost on rebuild and no automatic way to rebuild.

Is there any reason you can't copy entire program and all below subdirs to storage drive as a backup but just leave the messages and folders where they presently are? Are you in danger of running into known problems with exceeding the maximum folder 2GB size now for one or more folders?

1. Install a new version of Pmail in the directory where you want to keep
your archived data: it can be on any drive including networked ones subject,
of course, to appropriate sharing rights and permissions.

2. Run the new installation so that it gets set up properly. You can skip
the Internet setup questions.
From Help/About/Info note the Home mailbox location.
Exit.

3. Open your normal Pmail.
From the "Folders" pulldown menu (only available when the Folders window is
in focus) select "Add mailbox to list".
Enter the path to the new installation and click "OK".
The added mailbox now appears in "Folders".
You can now move messages from your normal(Home) installation to the archive: 
unfortunately Pmail does not allow folders to be moved so, if you want to
move a complete folder to the archive:-
Create("Add") a new folder of the same name in the added mailbox.
Open the folder in the home mailbox.
Strike Ctl-A to select all messages.
Move the selection to the new folder in the added mailbox.
Optionally, delete the folder in the home mailbox.

4. Before closing Pmail it is recommended that you disconnect the added
mailbox by right clicking on its icon as, leaving it connected, can slow the
opening of Pmail considerably especially if it's on a network.

You can always regain access to it by using "Add mailbox to list".

Bob

Thanks for your help, Jerry.   The reason I want to move some of the folers/mail into storage is to improve the speed  of Pegasus.   My plan was to copy back any folders I might require in the future - - that is if/when I require them.

Thanks again.

Ted

Thanks for your help Bob.  I'll give this some thought.  In the past I've been able to copy all the folders from one computer to another and paste them into another copy of Pegasus that I had installed there - - and it always worked.  I assumed that if I moved a folder from the "home" program files and kept them on another drive I could simply copy them back if/when I needed to gain access to them.  My belief is that by keeping the folders that were archived outside of Pegasus then Pegasus would work faster and smoother than it can when bogged down with so many files to open.

Thanks again

Ted