Tutorial Thursday
For one reason or another many email applications don’t provide an easy way to backup all of your data. To me it seems like a no brainer to offer such a feature especially for online email services where you have a minimal amount of control over how you can export your data. Luckily there are some applications out there that can give you a hand!
The free MailStore Home is a fine example of a top-notch program that can help keep your sanity. It is setup to retrieve emails from applications and web services (via POP3 or IMAP), and offer a one-click backup solution. Here is the wide array of apps and services it supports:
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft Outlook Express
- Microsoft Windows Mail
- Microsoft Exchange Server Mailboxes
- AVM KEN! Mailboxes
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- Mozilla SeaMonkey
- Webmailer
- POP3 and IMAP (Gmail offers both options for free)
- File Import
It’s so easy to use that anyone smart enough to understand an email application will have no troubles figuring it out…
- Download and install the free MailStore (download mirror). Then run MailStore.
- Click on the Import Messages tab at the top of the application, and then along the right side choose what you want to import. I’m going to import my Gmail account using the new IMAP support, so I clicked the IMAP option.
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- Now you’ll need to configure the settings for your account. If you’re importing from an application such as Thunderbird or Outlook it won’t ask for much other than the profile name. If you’re importing from an IMAP or POP3 account you’ll need to enter in the server details:
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- All that’s left to do is double-click on the new profile that you created, and towards the bottom of the window it will show you the email backup progress.
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- After the emails (including attachments) have been imported you can leave them there as they are, preview/browse them, search them, or export them as a .EML file so that they can be imported back into the original application. MailStore even has integrated burning software so that you can burn the emails onto a CD or DVD for more reassurance that your data is safe!
The great thing is that once you’ve setup the profile in Step 3 you’ll never have to do it again! To perform an email backup just start MailStore and double-click the profile that you created. Unfortunately there is no way to automatically schedule future backups, but it’s such a fast process that I don’t see that being an issue.
Go get MailStore Home and keep your sanity!
Kudos to Radu for this awesome tip!
Uh….. this is what I have been looking for… ages. It really works fine and I would recommend Mail Store in particular if you’re email address is a Gmail one… eheh I’ve lost a whole year, maybe more, of emails thanks to Gmail. I’ve been lucky I forwarded any incoming email to my very old Yahoo! email address since when I started my Gmail account.
I’m glad it worked well for you Michele. It’s definitely one of the best solutions for backing up emails, and I’m just amazed that it’s free.
Mine will only import 1,933 of my Gmail email’s (all folders). My Gmail has 15,969 emails though, so it’s definitely not getting them all…
Gmail doesn’t allow all in one downloads (POP,etc). Like if you set up gmail to POP all your emails form previous two years for example to thunderbird all won’t be downloaded in one shot, thats a gmail limit.
MailStore is an amazing app….very useful…but I’m really surprised there isn’t an automatic “set it and forget it” way to backup….for my Gmail and other POP3/IMAP4 accounts, I use a desktop client so it’s sort of a backup where the downloaded messages on the HDD and online automatically stay in sync. Also, if using a desktop client, a simple Xcopy command/batch file can backup everything automatically replacing older backups.
Try using IMAP. I didn’t have any problems with getting all of my Gmail emails that way, but I think I only had around 2,200.