Why don't email programs store emails in My Documents

[pschroeter]

Why do email programs like Outlook and Thunderbird store emails the way they do in strange unfriendly formats. What I mean is why doesn't each program act more like word processors and create a Outlook/Thunderbird Emails folder in My Documents, with each email an individual clickable file that opens the program, and a folder structure that mirrors the folder tree in each program?

[nikos]

i guess that would create too much "waste" space if there was 1 file for each email. Not that it is impossible!