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How to back up my emails in Thunderbird before changing my email provider?

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  • Last reply by david

tenjuergen
tenjuergen
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I have to switch to another email provider. But the old provider does not allow me to back up my emails and later re-import them at the new provider. I have been using IMAP for all my emails. So when I change the settings in Thunderbird to the new email provider's settings, I assume that in Thunderbird, all my older emails will be deleted (when Thunderbird synchs my account with the new email provider, and the old emails are not there, I assume all older emails will be deleted from Thunderbird?). How can I avoid losing my old emails during the migration? I have already created subfolders to my Local Folders (Backup/email1, etc), and copied all my emails there. Is that enough? Those would not disappear during a switch of email providers, right? Also, I work with a laptop on the road, and a desktop from at home, and I have no access to the desktop machine at his time. How can I transfer the backed-up emails from my Local Folder to the desktop computer later?

I have to switch to another email provider. But the old provider does not allow me to back up my emails and later re-import them at the new provider. I have been using IMAP for all my emails. So when I change the settings in Thunderbird to the new email provider's settings, I assume that in Thunderbird, all my older emails will be deleted (when Thunderbird synchs my account with the new email provider, and the old emails are not there, I assume all older emails will be deleted from Thunderbird?). How can I avoid losing my old emails during the migration? I have already created subfolders to my Local Folders (Backup/email1, etc), and copied all my emails there. Is that enough? Those would not disappear during a switch of email providers, right? Also, I work with a laptop on the road, and a desktop from at home, and I have no access to the desktop machine at his time. How can I transfer the backed-up emails from my Local Folder to the desktop computer later?

All Replies (1)

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
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If you have copied all messages from IMAP folders to Local Folders, you have prevented loss of the messages. To put the folders on the desktop computer, just - exit thunderbird on laptop - copy the Mail\Local Folders folders of interest to a USB stick - on desktop, create the same dummy folders in thunderbird - exit TB and copy the folders from USB to overwrite the dummy folders.