Review of Mail Steward

Copyright 2007, 2008 Claire J Rottenberg

Do you have hundreds, or maybe thousands, of email messages slowing down your email program? Wouldn't it be great if you could remove some of those messages and archive them in an easily accessible database? You can with MailSteward. And, if you want to store less than 3,000 messages, you can use the fully functional, demo version of MailSteward for free.

MailSteward is a stand-alone database for storing email from Apple's Mail program. You archive the email messages of your choice and then you can safely remove them from Mail, thus, freeing up space and speeding up Mail. If you don't use Mail, you can still use MailSteward by importing your email messages into the program.

MailSteward's features include:

• Archive email messages as text, HTML or raw source
• Store attachments with email messages
• Create separate databases for easier management
• Browse or search email messages
• Schedule times for automatic archiving
• Export email messages to tab delimited format
• Import email messages from other email programs
• Backup and restore MailSteward databases

MailSteward is an easy program to use. The main window is a small panel with four buttons: settings, archive, search, and browse.

Set Preferences

You use the MailSteward settings pane to set preferences for the email messages you want to include in a database. You can also open a previously saved database from this pane.

Archive Messages

Once you've selected email accounts or mailboxes, MailSteward can immediately archive your selected email messages. Note that archiving can take a long time if you have many messages.

Browse or Search Messages

The browse window lists all messages in the database in the top half of the window and you can preview the messages in the lower half.

One useful feature in the browse window is the "Tag" button that lets you add keywords to messages. You can then use these keywords to search for messages in MailSteward's search window.

MailSteward's search function lets you search for messages by sender or receiver, subject, mailbox, text in body of message, attachment names, keywords, or categories.

Pros and Cons of MailSteward

MailSteward is a unique program that lets you easily archive email messages, especially if you use Apple's Mail program. Some of MailSteward's strengths are:

• Backups that can be copied and stored on external disks
• Separate small databases that can be "cleaned out" and then merged
• Scheduled archiving that lets MailSteward do the work for you
• Low price (free for up to 3,000 email messages)

Although MailSteward is an excellent program, it does have a few negatives:

• Slow archiving, especially for many email messages
• Unattractive, non-OS X interface
• Annoying and frequent pop-up warnings with the free version

MailSteward is definitely worth trying, especially if your mailboxes are overflowing with old mail that should be archived and removed. Visit the MailSteward website today and download a free, fully-functional demo.

Disclaimer: All trademarks and products mentioned in this review are assumed to be the property of their owners and no infringement of rights is intended through mention of the products.