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Here's yet another item that was lost when my host had it's little problem...

I clean out my e-mail folders and archive my old e-mail at the beginning of every year. In addition to backing up the mail database files, I also export all of the e-mail to individual text files so it's not so hard to find and read a particular e-mail message if I have to do so.

Until recently, I've been using Outlook Express without complaint. In 2005, I switched to Entourage 2004. Saving individual messages used to be as simple as using Select All in a mail folder and then dragging the items into a folder on my desktop. Once the messages were been saved that way, I just deleted the originals.

This works on individual messages in Entourage, but a serious bug in the program prevents it from working with multiple files selected. Instead, just a few of the messages are copied to the folder. If I hadn't double-checked the folder contents then several thousand messages would have been lost.

After some experimentation, I gave up on finding any way to get Entourage to work with drag-and-drop. It just won't work. But this script works.

tell application "Microsoft Entourage"

set selectedMessages to current messages

if selectedMessages is {} then
display dialog "Please select a message first and then run this script." with icon 1
return
end if

set MySaveFolder to (choose folder with prompt "Choose destination folder...")

repeat with theMessage in selectedMessages
save theMessage in MySaveFolder
end repeat

end tell

Copy and paste the script into the Script Editor and save it as a compiled script. Save it to this folder...

~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Entourage Script Menu Items

Then it will appear in Entourage's Script menu. From within Entourage, select the messages that you want to archive and then select the script from the Script menu.

The script has one bug which I think is actually a bug in Entourage's AppleScript support. It will actually save files to the parent folder of the folder that you select. So make a new folder inside of the folder that you're saving to and select that folder or else you might end up with a lot of files where you didn't want them.