Regarding latest Admin's notice about PMs...

[Lumos]

Which states:

Quote:I would like to announce to please backup your pm storage (inbox, sent item) .
I will give 1 month chance for everyone to backup your important pm if there is any as i will do a complete deletion of all pm to decrease the database.
Deletion of all pm will take effect starting February 01, 2022

Question for Admin, please=>
Your post says 'inbox, sent item' - but really does it mean ALL our PMs will be deleted including drafts and folders we've made for storage too ??

It is easily seen why this is important, especially pre-upgrading.
(This member had loads of PMs and imagine it takes alot of space.)

So, upon visiting here:
http://bestblackhatforum.com/private.php?action=export

It shows:

Quote:Export File Format
Please choose the file type of which to download attachments.
HTML File (.html)
Text File (.txt)
Importable MS Excel File (.csv)

Good so far - but never having done this before, I'd like to ask if other members have done it and may be kind enough to answer some questions, please...?

When doing this upon a selected folder of messages - does the output file always look like an endless string of messages ??

I did a test with HTML output and it is readable enough via browser, but so lengthy as to be quite the challenge to find a specific PM.

In CSV or TXT formats - is it also readable - like with breaks in between - or a mess and hard to read ??

Is there an easy way to go about this for making a local storage file for these exported PMs ??

[Lumos]

Only a couple of weeks left prior to this deadline, so I hope this thread gets some info added to it soon enough to do whatever is needed ??

[DacInBC]

I never saw the original announcement.
I tried the Importable MS Excel CSV export,
Selected Inbox (then came back and did sent folder too)
Selected disregard date
Selected No to Export Unread messages as I had none
Selected No to Delete after export

This produced a CSV file that I was able to load up into Libre Office and examine. It puts each message into a line.
You can then examine this or import it into a MySQL database, or whatever. It is probably the best format.
But the size might be an issue for you.

I would suggest this method:
First export everything from your inbox so you have a back up if needed.
Next, find out what year your oldest messages are from, use December 31st of that year, then translate that into days.

I would then export all items older than (the calculated days) and set the Delete Export Messages to Yes
This will export into CSV your oldest messages for that particular year.

Take your calculated days, remove 365 from it and repeat.

Keep doing that until you have exported all years of your messages.
Repeat the whole process for the sent folder.

Note: when saving, make sure you give the filename a meaningful name as the tool defaults to the same filename each time.

Hope that helps.
D.

[DacInBC]

I never saw the original announcement.
I tried the Importable MS Excel CSV export,
Selected Inbox (then came back and did sent folder too)
Selected disregard date
Selected No to Export Unread messages as I had none
Selected No to Delete after export

This produced a CSV file that I was able to load up into Libre Office and examine. It puts each message into a line.
You can then examine this or import it into a MySQL database, or whatever. It is probably the best format.
But the size might be an issue for you.

I would suggest this method:
First export everything from your inbox so you have a back up if needed.
Next, find out what year your oldest messages are from, use December 31st of that year, then translate that into days.

I would then export all items older than (the calculated days) and set the Delete Export Messages to Yes
This will export into CSV your oldest messages for that particular year.

Take your calculated days, remove 365 from it and repeat.

Keep doing that until you have exported all years of your messages.
Repeat the whole process for the sent folder.

Note: when saving, make sure you give the filename a meaningful name as the tool defaults to the same filename each time.

Hope that helps.
D.

[Archon]

Tried downloading as above and it timed out several times.

I lost my most recent inbox. Was 36% and no 20% PM of spaced used.

Such a shame and wonder if ADMIN can help me with this. I hope I can get them back.

Don't know what happened and please be careful with this exporting messages.

[Archon]

I just tried to export my inbox and it timed out (BestBlackHatForum CloudFlare 524 error If I recall)
and I lost some of my inbox and I hope the admin will be able to
help me to recover these messages. PM Messages was 36% and now 20% space used.

Please be careful with this my friends!!