So with this board reaching it's end of life, you might want to make an archive of your Private Messages.

To do this, go to your UserCP and select the "Archive Messages" link:


That will bring you to a page with this:


For the majority of you, the fastest way to back up everything is to archive everything from all your folders:

You could do this as separate processes for each folder instead, if you want.

Next, to select a range of messages to archive. Apparently, the option "all" doesn't seem to work (this board is falling apart) so here are two workarounds: You can set it to the last 365 days and newer...

...or the past day and older.


Now you specify how many messages you want to save. Since we're trying to do them all at once, I'd suggest selecting the maximum.


You also have the option to delete your PMs after they are archived. That's entirely up to you.

Finally, the "Compile datafile as" option is set to an Excel file by default. Great!... if you use Excel. You'd be better off choosing the alternative:


Then just click "Process", and you're done! You'll get an email with an archive of your PMs.