The Most Important Add-on You Should Have For Thunderbird
First of all, if you haven't at least tried the Mozilla Thunderbird email client, you should because it is a very good piece of open source software. I have been using it for a couple of years now, and I haven't had any trouble with it, except for one thing. It doesn't have a way to back up your emails to various other formats. It does use an open format for storing your emails that will allow you to import your emails into another email client if you should need to, which is excellent. The one thing it doesn't do, is allow you to select a bunch of emails and store them in formats like .eml or .html for long term backup.
Now, when I talk about long term backup, I am talking about digital archiving. In the old days, we used to have copies of everything on paper. As long as you kept the paper safe, you had your records for as long as you needed them. Now, however, we are keeping digital copies of things more and more. And a lot of the important receipts and invoices we get are being kept in our email accounts. If you are a compulsive sort of person, you may print out all of your receipts and store them away, but if you are like me, you tend to forget or just don't know better. The truth is that software and hardware change over time, and if you don't pay attention, you can lose access to things. I know I have some 5.25" floppies that I have no way to read now. Fortunately, there is nothing important on them. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to back up your emails to some form of text file, as those should always be readable.
The best way I have found to back up masses of email from Thunderbird is to use an excellent extension called ImportExportTools. You can find out more about it and download it from here. The best thing it allows you to do is to export your emails in EML, html, or plain text file format. Once you have downloaded it, open Thunderbird and go to Tools, Extensions. In the box that pops up, select Install, and open the file you have downloaded. Click Install Now. Close the Extension window and Thunderbird and restart Thunderbird to finish installing. If all went well, you should now have a new option on the File menu. To save your emails, highlight the ones you wish to save from your email list and click on File, Save selected messages. From there you select the format and where you want them saved. When complete, you should have a directory full of individual email files. As far as what format to use goes, I recommend EML as that will have a better chance of storing attachments. If you don't want your attachments saved, plain text would be better for you.
Also, if any Thunderbird developers are listening, this should be a feature built in to the program.
Posted by PH on 06-22-2007 12:20:05 CST
Now, when I talk about long term backup, I am talking about digital archiving. In the old days, we used to have copies of everything on paper. As long as you kept the paper safe, you had your records for as long as you needed them. Now, however, we are keeping digital copies of things more and more. And a lot of the important receipts and invoices we get are being kept in our email accounts. If you are a compulsive sort of person, you may print out all of your receipts and store them away, but if you are like me, you tend to forget or just don't know better. The truth is that software and hardware change over time, and if you don't pay attention, you can lose access to things. I know I have some 5.25" floppies that I have no way to read now. Fortunately, there is nothing important on them. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to back up your emails to some form of text file, as those should always be readable.
The best way I have found to back up masses of email from Thunderbird is to use an excellent extension called ImportExportTools. You can find out more about it and download it from here. The best thing it allows you to do is to export your emails in EML, html, or plain text file format. Once you have downloaded it, open Thunderbird and go to Tools, Extensions. In the box that pops up, select Install, and open the file you have downloaded. Click Install Now. Close the Extension window and Thunderbird and restart Thunderbird to finish installing. If all went well, you should now have a new option on the File menu. To save your emails, highlight the ones you wish to save from your email list and click on File, Save selected messages. From there you select the format and where you want them saved. When complete, you should have a directory full of individual email files. As far as what format to use goes, I recommend EML as that will have a better chance of storing attachments. If you don't want your attachments saved, plain text would be better for you.
Also, if any Thunderbird developers are listening, this should be a feature built in to the program.