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== Tools I Use ==

*[http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/ IMAPSize]
*[http://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html ImportExportTools] extension for Thunderbird
*[http://freshmeat.net/projects/imapsync/ imapsync]
*[http://www.dovecot.org/ Dovecot]
*raw IMAP -- see [http://bobpeers.com/technical/telnet_imap Accessing an IMAP email account using telnet] for a quick howto

ImapSize is really handy to look for the biggest things to archive.

ImapSize also has decent download and backup capabilities, and I had been using it for archiving some IMAP folders.  However, since it's Windows-only, it requires either a virtual Windows machine, or booting into Windows.

ImportExportTools looks really handy, and I just started using it.  Since it runs in Thunderbird, it runs nicely on Linux.  If IMAPSize is running, it's still handy to use that for checking sizes and emptying (delete+expunge) mailboxes.

N.B.: IMAP is slow.  It takes a long time to export thousands of messages.