Question Backing up emails

[tinpanalley]

I'm moving from one domain to another permanently. Does anyone know of a way to fully do a backup, snapshot of an entire email address inbox (all subfolders) in a way that one can reopen it at any time to search for an older email?
I've tried creating a PST with Outlook and every time the PST it produces has only empty folders.
I tried figuring out creating an MBOX with Thunderbird and, total honesty, I couldn't figure it out.

 

[mikeymikec]

I presume your e-mail data is currently in ost format rather than pst? If it's in pst I would just grab the pst file and that's it.

If it's in ost format, this should work:

Export emails, contacts, and calendar items to Outlook using a .pst file - Microsoft Support

Export Outlook email, contacts, and calendar to move them to another computer or so that you can make a backup of your information.

support.microsoft.com

Another more simple solution would be to manually create whatever folder structure you need in the pst file then drag and drop the mails you need to keep.

With a sufficiently old version of Thunderbird (I normally use 17 ESR for this job, IIRC) can import directly from Outlook if you don't mind a more unconventional solution. Getting it back into Outlook might not be fun though; TB can be told to store e-mails each in its own file which I presume Outlook can import a bunch of those, but then Outlook's import capabilities have been cut right back.

 

[tinpanalley]

I presume your e-mail data is currently in ost format rather than pst? If it's in pst I would just grab the pst file and that's it.

If it's in ost format, this should work:

Export emails, contacts, and calendar items to Outlook using a .pst file - Microsoft Support

Export Outlook email, contacts, and calendar to move them to another computer or so that you can make a backup of your information.

support.microsoft.com

Another more simple solution would be to manually create whatever folder structure you need in the pst file then drag and drop the mails you need to keep.

With a sufficiently old version of Thunderbird (I normally use 17 ESR for this job, IIRC) can import directly from Outlook if you don't mind a more unconventional solution. Getting it back into Outlook might not be fun though; TB can be told to store e-mails each in its own file which I presume Outlook can import a bunch of those, but then Outlook's import capabilities have been cut right back.

What I have is my email, hosted on my mail host (mxroute), and as a client on my computer I use Outlook 2019.
So the format I have is whatever those two things are 😂

 

[mikeymikec]

What I have is my email, hosted on my mail host (mxroute), and as a client on my computer I use Outlook 2019.
So the format I have is whatever those two things are 😂

I don't know mxroute, but there are three protocols (AFAIK) that your mail client can use to retrieve mail:

POP3
IMAP
Exchange

That version of Outlook will typically auto-name that file according to the e-mail account it was set up for (ie. an e-mail address).

If it's POP3, then your mail data is stored in a pst file, and I think it will typically be stored in Documents\Outlook Files.
If it's IMAP or Exchange, then your mail data is stored in an ost file, and I think it will typically be stored in %localappdata%\Microsoft\Outlook.

Going into Control Panel > Mail > Data Files will tell you the names and locations of the data files that Outlook is connected up to. If you're using multiple Outlook profiles then you ought to dig deeper into Control Panel > Mail.

 

[tinpanalley]

If it's IMAP or Exchange, then your mail data is stored in an ost file, and I think it will typically be stored in %localappdata%\Microsoft\Outlook.

Ok, so it's .ost and they are exactly where you said. Also, we use IMAP to connect to our host.
But can I just pop open that OST anytime in the future in Outlook and see the whole inbox as it looks today?

 

[mikeymikec]

Ok, so it's .ost and they are exactly where you said. Also, we use IMAP to connect to our host.
But can I just pop open that OST anytime in the future in Outlook and see the whole inbox as it looks today?

AFAIK no. Microsoft says that OST file is "special" so it cannot possibly interact with it unless it is already connected with an IMAP/Exchange account. You can buy third party software to read it.

I think what Microsoft expects you to do is to set up Outlook on the new PC and spend a yonk or five redownloading all the mail you already had in the old OST file. Oh, and you have to wait for it to finish sync'ing before it will let you send a test e-mail to make sure it's both sending and receiving.

However, if you wanted to have a readable backup of that data, you could export it to a PST file.

Yes, Microsoft Outlook's many shortcomings irritate me.

Thunderbird ftw. Just pick up that profile and drop it on the new PC, at worst do a quick find and replace on the prefs.js configuration file to update it for a new profile location.

 

[tinpanalley]

However, if you wanted to have a readable backup of that data, you could export it to a PST file.

Thunderbird ftw. Just pick up that profile and drop it on the new PC, at worst do a quick find and replace on the prefs.js configuration file to update it for a new profile location.

Ok, so that's exactly what I was saying in my question with the PSTs. I've tried creating a PST with Outlook and every time the PST it produces has only empty folders.
Thunderbird is even more complicated. Their apparently very easy to use plugin for creating an MBOX, "ImportExportTools NG" is too complicated for me to figure out. None of the instructions I find online work.

 

[mikeymikec]

Ok, so that's exactly what I was saying in my question with the PSTs. I've tried creating a PST with Outlook and every time the PST it produces has only empty folders.
Thunderbird is even more complicated. Their apparently very easy to use plugin for creating an MBOX, "ImportExportTools NG" is too complicated for me to figure out. None of the instructions I find online work.

I did say how you could easily do it with Thunderbird.

PST - so did you tell it to export to a PST and you only ended up with empty folders? If so, if you bring up the e-mail account properties, what have you got the 'keep mail offline' setting set to? I think by default it's set to download everything since forever, but if one wanted to reduce downloading / disk space usage, one could set it to download nothing at all so Outlook only downloads individual mails on demand.

The other thing I wonder about is whether you've got some errors in your ost file which is stopping the export, but it does seem odd in that case that it wouldn't export any mail. If you want to check for that possibility, scanpst.exe is in the Program Files \ Microsoft Office folder, point it at your ost file and let rip. It offers to create a backup after scanning and before beginning repairs.

 

[Quintessa]

I've tried creating a PST with Outlook and every time the PST it produces has only empty folders.

Outlook doesn’t actually cache everything by default anymore. It keeps only a 3, 6, or 12-month window locally unless you change it. When you export, it only writes what’s already cached.

 

[Ken g6]

There is a reason I use Thunderbird with POP3. I don't think IMAP downloads all the emails; just the ones you click on. Edit: And last I looked Outlook's email format wasn't human-readable like Thunderbird's.

 

[mikeymikec]

There is a reason I use Thunderbird with POP3. I don't think IMAP downloads all the emails; just the ones you click on. Edit: And last I looked Outlook's email format wasn't human-readable like Thunderbird's.

On the default settings, TB stores all the mails locally and in the same format as it does with POP3 messages. You can tell it not to store data locally though.

Outlook 2021 here gives me the option to download all mail from IMAP with the minimum option being one month's worth. I don't have 2024 or 365 handy to check (but I will be playing with Outlook 2024 shortly for a customer).

Like TB, Outlook can also be configured to only download mails from particular folders.

Historically I've stuck with POP3 because I don't trust most of my mail providers to store all my e-mail forever, and even though one can configure mail clients to sync it all locally too, I don't trust what would happen if one's IMAP mail provider had a data loss and presented no email in a particular folder, would the local mail client bin its copy in the next sync too: I suspect it would.

 

[tinpanalley]

There is a reason I use Thunderbird with POP3. I don't think IMAP downloads all the emails; just the ones you click on. Edit: And last I looked Outlook's email format wasn't human-readable like Thunderbird's.

How do you use more than one device and keep any sense of unity between them if you only do POP3?

 

[mikeymikec]

How do you use more than one device and keep any sense of unity between them if you only do POP3?

I don't know about you, but my need to look up ancient e-mails when on the move is extremely rare, and not being able to do that results in me thinking, "oh well, I'll look it up later".

TB at home is set to leave a couple of weeks' worth of messages on the server, but one could set it to any number of days really. Therefore on other clients than the 'master' one, one can see that many days worth of older messages.

The other downside is the sent folder, but again I'm not sending many important mails from my phone, and any that are get auto-cc'd to me so I can file them when I get home.

Any news on what you've got the account set to in terms of storing messages locally?

 

[Ken g6]

How do you use more than one device and keep any sense of unity between them if you only do POP3?

You mean like marking an email read on one device does so for all? I don't - and I didn't even think of it being a thing until now.

 

[tinpanalley]

You mean like marking an email read on one device does so for all? I don't - and I didn't even think of it being a thing until now.

I've had my email like this for years. Over a decade actually.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I'm moving from one domain to another permanently. Does anyone know of a way to fully do a backup, snapshot of an entire email address inbox (all subfolders) in a way that one can reopen it at any time to search for an older email?

Is the email hosted on your company's email server? If yes, the IT admin may be able to save your entire inbox in a PST file and provide it to you for downloading or on a USB flash drive.

If not, one idea I can think of is to try download the entire inbox by setting up IMAP on The Bat! (it does require a license unfortunately). It also has a portable version available that you could install on an external SSD and take with you wherever.

If you would rather not pay for that, you could try doing the same IMAP download thing on Mailspring.

Other options: https://zapier.com/blog/best-email-clients-windows/