I couldn't find this in any forum (other than some very old threads that are no longer applicable or relevant), and I couldn't find an extension/add-on that does that eit… (read more)
I couldn't find this in any forum (other than some very old threads that are no longer applicable or relevant), and I couldn't find an extension/add-on that does that either (or rather, I did find one, but it's discontinued and not compatible with current Thunderbird), but I want to store only the plain-text part of multipart messages (text + HTML) that I receive, deleting the HTML part.
The reason for this is that I need to save disk space. I'm a digital hoarder, and I archive every relevant email message I receive (I only don't store spam that escapes through the cracks and reaches me, and such disposable messages as 2FA login codes and the like). I have several sound reasons to do that, but old messages have been useful to me as reference countless times. I have about 86,000 emails stored, sorted into a variety of message folders by topic, correspondent, etc. Some date as far back as 1996, having survived lots of account, email client, and hardware migrations through diligent backups and restores.
This results in a very large disk usage, and I must minimize it, for both space itself and backup time reasons. And the difference in size can be dramatic. Just one newsletter that I'm subscribed to sends me 3-4 messages a day, of which I'll probably keep two, but each full message is about 120–150 kB. Stripped of the HTML (and still totally readable and functional), that drops to just 10–12 kB. Now multiply that difference by the volume in one year.
I'm testing and evaluating Thunderbird to replace my current email client, which is excellent and designed for power users, but also very buggy, they're slow to fix the bugs, and this is getting on my nerves. That's why I'm looking for an alternative, and so far, Thunderbird is doing an excellent job in ticking off the list of features I need (and passed my message import tests from the old mailer with flying colors), except for this one feature, which can be a dealbreaker.
Any suggestions? Thank you very much in advance.
