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.