How to: I want to backup my emails to my external hard drive - all of them including those in labeled folders - stored on 2 yahoo accounts and 1 AOL account
I want to back up all my emails from my three email accounts. I have a legal matter I am involved in and had the horrible thought, what if my I went to my email online and found it empty? OMG how do I back up my emails to prevent this horror from occurring?
I researched online for a method to download and backup my emails. I trust "Ask Leo.com" and was recommended your Thunderbird software as capable of doing.
I want to copy, download and backup, all the emails stored in my Yahoo x2 accounts and AOL x1 account to an external hard drive and optionally to DropBox.
I use Macrium Reflect to Image my hard drive daily with full backups monthly and incremental backups done daily to my Western Digital Ultra My Passport 2TB external hard drive. Also all my data files, music, photos, videos, documents, apps, software everything except the OS, is backed up to Dropbox.
Can you help me accomplish this most important task?
All Replies (7)
Once you setup Thunderbird it will store the emails on your local hard drive.
You'll have to setup each separate email account in Thunderbird. I just googled setting it up for Yahoo and found this https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN3286.html
Just be aware of the differences between POP and IMAP email systems. IMAP is server based and you must do things differently to retain a local copy.
Airmail said
Just be aware of the differences between POP and IMAP email systems. IMAP is server based and you must do things differently to retain a local copy.
Airmail, Just curious, what specifically you have in mind here ?
Other than telling Thunderbird to use IMAP rather than POP is there something else ?
I thought that, by default, IMAP locally duplicates the data (onto my hard drive) and if I backup that disc ... end of story ... I have a backup of my emails ... am I missing something ?
Wrong. IMAP can keep synchronized copies on your local drive if you set it up that way but by default it loads message Headers only. Even if you set it to synchronize complete messages and do not move those messages into Local Folders there is a good chance you will not be left with copies if something goes bad with the server and Thunderbird synchronizes with the server.
This explains IMAP backup.http://kb.mozillazine.org/IMAP_backup
Deleted original
Thanks Airmail
Modified by NicholasB54
Here is a good add-on for moving and saving messages. https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html