Messages save as text, xml, csv

[Dave2002]

At present there is an option to save PMs as text, xml or csv files.

One problem is that on any one date the file names are the same. There does not seem to be any way to change or modify the date before downloading and saving the files. If the time were also appended that would at least partially avoid further problems.

The rather painful fix for this is to download one batch of messages, then change the file name in one's OS, then download the next batch.
Is this something which could be configured differently?

I'm assuming it's still unrealistic to allow for more than 200 messages per user - though nowadays I'd have expected storage to be cheap enough.

I don't really mind downloading and saving messages if it can be made simpler.

I like to download and store PMs before deleting all of them, and sometimes (as of today and yesterday) this becomes more important when one's inbox becomes full, which has happened to me, and also I note to one or two others.

[french frank]

The number of messages can be increased easily. I must admit I simply don't save messages when I've reached my quota: they just get deleted. This effectively means they will be kept for a couple of months. But if there were something I really wanted to keep - which has been the odd message - I copy it into a Word document (where it probably gets forgotten). I find it useful to keep Sent messages for a while but they eventually get deleted.

I will investigate the general settings options, but I don't think times can be added.

[Dave2002]

The number of messages can be increased easily. I must admit I simply don't save messages when I've reached my quota: they just get deleted. This effectively means they will be kept for a couple of months. But if there were something I really wanted to keep - which has been the odd message - I copy it into a Word document (where it probably gets forgotten). I find it useful to keep Sent messages for a while but they eventually get deleted.

I will investigate the general settings options, but I don't think times can be added.

If times can't be added, then at least the extension could also be reflected in the file name - e.g+c for csv, +x for xml, +t for text. Times would be useful - even just a few digits, to disambiguate the files. The work, such as it is, can of course all be done on the user side, but it is more tedious if the files all have the same name on any one date. I have been thinking for some while of making an archive tool which could harvest all my pms, so that would mean there would be no need to increase the limit on the server side. I think it could be done fairly easily using one of the standard xml tools - as I wrote a year or two back. I did do one or two prototypes, but didn't quite get to the point of having a working system.

Another variant would be to download all the pms in all formats in a zip file with the date as id. I usually download the inbox and sent folder in all 3 formats, then go for deletion.

From your point of view I would suggest that keeping the cap of 200 is not a bad idea - it forces "lazy" users, like me, to sort things out themselves. Indeed reducing the cap to 100 or lower might be even more effective! However, on the other hand, memory costs are dropping significantly, as I mentioned earlier, so if it didn't cause administrators any greater problems increasing the cap might help some people.

Thanks for thinking about this, anyway.