Hand it over in the format that is asked for

The formats

You export a selection, or exactly what a query finds. On request MailVault also writes a zip file and its checksum, for sending. The export sheet remembers its settings for next time.

The PDF with its attachments

A PDF is often the only copy of a message that leaves the building: to the auditor, to a court, to the other side. The attachments are part of the message, and with Embed attachments in the PDFs they travel inside the PDF:

• Clicking an attachment's name in the message header opens it.
• PDF viewers with an attachments list show them there too.
• The pages stay exactly as they were drawn: the attachments are appended to the finished PDF as an incremental update, and the PDF before it is still there, byte for byte, at the start of the file.
• Each PDF grows by the size of its attachments.

If a PDF cannot take its attachments, it is written without them, and the export says how many PDFs that affected. Whether attachments were embedded, and how many, is also recorded in the export's entry in the audit journal. On the command line the option is --attach-files:

mailvault export "Archive.mailvault" Handover --format pdf --attach-files

Readable without us

Switzerland's GeBüV requires records to be available for inspection until the end of the retention period and, on request, to be made readable even without tools (Art. 6). An archive that only its vendor's software can read depends on that vendor still existing. The portable archive depends on a browser.

With an index and digests

Next to the messages, an export contains an index as index.csv (semicolon-separated) and index.json. One line per message: SHA-256, Message-ID, date, sender, recipients, subject, folder, account, size, number of attachments, retention class and when the period ends.

MailVault adds the compliance report as it stood at the time of the export, the seals, and instructions for recomputing the journal, the seals and every message without MailVault. A whole-archive export carries the complete journal. A partial export carries only the entries about its messages and about the archive itself, such as seals, checks and policy changes, because the complete journal also covers other people's correspondence; the whole chain can be recomputed in the archive the export came from. Every export and printout is recorded in the audit journal. An archive kept where nothing can be written still exports; the export cannot be recorded there, and MailVault says so.

What goes out comes back whole

An export is only as good as what comes back from it. A message that came back one byte shorter would have another digest, and to an archive it would be another message.

An mbox, Maildir or EML export, and the portable archive, can be read back into an archive just as MailVault wrote them, index and report still in the folder. Every message comes back: in its mailbox, byte for byte, with the same digest. In the portable archive, a message that came attached to another stays an attachment. Whatever the archive already holds is recognised and not stored twice.

Printing

A selection can be printed on paper or to PDF, with only the headers if you like, as a list for an audit, for example. Printing stays available without a licence after the trial.

Back into a mailbox

An archived message can be restored to the mail server, into the mailbox it came from or another one. It is appended with its original delivery time, so it sorts where it belongs rather than at the top. In the app this is the only place MailVault writes to a mail server, and every restored message is recorded in the audit journal with the server and mailbox. On the command line, mailvault upload puts a whole archive back on an IMAP server with its folders, flags and delivery times.

A single message can also be dragged to the Finder or saved as .eml. Apple Mail, however, does not accept .eml files dropped onto its mailboxes; use the server route or an mbox export instead.