September 27, 2019
4min Read
Domantas G.
It’s always a good idea to back up your emails in case you suffer from sudden data loss. If you are not sure how to make a backup copy, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will learn how to back up email messages using three popular desktop email clients.
To receive emails from a web server, a client needs to use a set of so-called protocols. For sending messages, there’s SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), while for incoming mail protocols, there are IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and POP3 (Post Office Protocol). The main difference between these two is that IMAP allows email synchronization across multiple devices, while POP3 does not. Here’s a more detailed explanation about this topic.
You can set up any email to work with an email client, provided that you have the required configuration details of these protocols.
If you’re using Hostinger to receive your emails, here’s how to collect your data:
Alternatively, if you’re using Gmail or Yahoo Mail, you need to enable access to these protocols from your account first.
Setting up POP access in Gmail allows you to store a copy of your messages locally via any email client. By default, this protocol automatically deletes the original one from the webmail’s inbox after downloading it. However, Gmail gives you an option to determine whether to delete, archive, keep, or mark them as read instead.
To enable POP access in Gmail, do the following:
IMAP, as explained earlier, synchronizes messages with the server so they can be accessed from any device. To configure IMAP access for Yahoo Mail, you just need to tweak its security settings.
Once you have your email server details, you need to configure your account with the email client to back up your messages. Below you can find the steps to do it using three different email applications.
Begin by adding your email account to Outlook, which you can do by following this tutorial. In the steps below, we will learn how to back up Outlook emails using the 2019 version.
As you can see, using Outlook to back up your emails takes only a few clicks.
Launch Thunderbird and configure your email by referring to this tutorial. After you’ve finished setting up your account, check your inbox to see whether there is a missing message. If there is, you can synchronize it manually by clicking the Get Messages button.
Now, to back up using Thunderbird can be tricky since this email client does not have an in-built email export feature. However, there is a workaround:
That’s it! Thunderbird will export all the selected email messages in .eml format
macOS users can back up emails using Apple Mail client. Skip to the fourth step if you already have your account set up:
That’s it, you have successfully backed up your email using Apple Mail. Since the .mbox format is broadly supported by all major email clients, you shouldn’t have any trouble migrating to a different one.
We have learned how to back up emails using Outlook, Thunderbird, and Apple Mail.
Hopefully, this guide made backing up emails less daunting to you!
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