Back Up Your Email Using Thunderbird
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- čas přidán 26. 02. 2021
- ✏️ Using a desktop email program to back up email avoids potential data loss. I'll show you how using Outlook.com and Thunderbird as examples.
Configure Thunderbird to access and download your email using your email service’s IMAP settings to back up. Leave Thunderbird running (or run it periodically) to make sure your backups are up to date. You’ll also need to periodically manually export and download your contacts to back them up as well.
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The trick? You have to download it to your computer first. Here's a quick "How To."
I am a huge AskLeo fan. Sometimes I find what you say makes me question other things. In this video I wondered how you got the Outlook addresses into the Thunderbird address book? I would completely agree that contacts/addresses in email clients is a huge mess -- another time another video. Thanks Leo!
Wonderful! Thank you, Leo. For quite some time I've wanted to have a backup of my web-only email but I didn't know how, and frankly I'm not sure I knew it was even possible. So I really appreciated the walk-through.
I have a head start in that my current operating system (Linux Mint) comes with Thunderbird pre-installed. I've been tempted to use it because I was impressed with the program many years ago, in my Windows days, but I like having access to all my emails online. Therefore I really appreciated you being careful to point out the _IMAP_ option which will leave a copy of my emails on the servers. Great information, carefully presented as always. By the way, I've been a fan of yours since my Windows days as well. :-)
Great video! You definitely have a knack for making the non-obvious become easy. This is a precious skill. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and your know-how. You just gained a new subscriber. Thank you Leo!
Thanks, Leo! I used to use Thunderbird back in the days of Windows 95 and 98..lol
Thank you so much for this video as the new Thunderbird update 115 would not accept my outlook account fully. I deleted my outlook account from Thunderbird, tried to add it again but did not know about the separate password required. After faffing about for nearly a week trying to figure how to get my Outlook account to synchronize with Thunderbird, I came upon your video &, voila, my problem was solved. As a reader of Ask Leo for many, many years you have helped with loads of problems for this very old senior and this is another that can be added to that list.
Thank you!! After much frustration, you were the only one to mention using an app password to get it to work. I only wanted to get my current emails backed up and there was no easy way to get them in TB using hotmail's pst file.
This is what i was looking for thanks!
Thanks Leo!
Thanks God for having those genius people in our lives. Thanks Mr. Leo
Hey Leo, how do i import my calendar from Outlook into Thunderbird?
When I delete an email from the gmail server, it also deletes it off thunderbird. How to stop this happening so backup is safe ?
In thunderbird, create a set of local folders, and copy what you want ot save to those.
Yeah, it’s not backed up unless and until you move it to a local folder.
Hello, thank you for your instructions. I'm looking for a simple way to copy all emails form Windows/Thunderbird to Mac/Outlook. Could you help me?
This might be a start: askleo.com/move-email-messages-to-another-account/
Hi, Leo, can you recommend a uTube video on how to customise Thunderbird please?
Hello Leo. Thanks for this tutorial. This is very helpful. Just one question: If the online Outlook account becomes disabled (say, when one leaves the organization), will the copy on Thunderbird remain? Or do I have to copy all folders (inbox, outbox, etc) to the Local Folders? Thanks once again.
The copy should remain. Backing up wouldn't hurt though. :-)
@@askleonotenboom Thanks again. Much appreciated.
After configuring yahoo IDs, how to do mail merge with thunderbird from yahoo Email Ids ?
Excellent video, thanks! I'm sure Thunderbird encrypts email passwords, but what about the local database where it downloads all our emails. Is it encrypted as well? Or at least not "clear text"? I know it's my PC so it should be "safe", but still, I don't like the idea of anyone using a text or hex editor and being able to read my emails of years past if they get access to my PC or my backups.
Thunderbird stores email in plain text, yes. (That it's a common/standard format is one of it's appealing features to me.) If you want encryption you'll need to do that some other way -- BitLocker, VeraCrypt, BoxCryptor are all possible solutions.
Leo my Hotmail is full so once Thunderbird pull in my current emails can I delete the old emails from hotmail's server?
It depends on how you've configured Thunderbird. If you're using IMAP, for example, then deleting in Hotmail would ALSO delete in Thunderbird. I would create a local folder in Thunderbird, and copy all of the email to that folder first.
I just started using Thunderbird because I couldn't freaking get Outlook to install, even though I bought a license and used my Microsoft account. It STILL would not install correctly and I gave up. Anyway, I set Thunderbird to use a POP server for my gMail, and I plan to back up the C drive files to other drives periodically. This reminds me--do you know the best way to import a PST file to Thunderbird? I see lots of videos telling me to download and use third-party software. Also, I watched your video thinking you would tell me where the POP files are located so that I can back them up. Or is there an "export" feature in Thunderbird? I also set Thunderbird to leave all messages on the server and never delete them, as a kind of archive. Thx.
Importing a PST file to Thunderbird: nothing simple, sorry. If I had to do it I would:
1) Install Outlook (sorry)
2) Configure it to access some account using IMAP
3) Copy all the email from the PST to the IMAP account
4) Configure Thunderbird to access that same account
5) Download it all to Thunderbird.
One of the reasons I dislike Outlook (which, to be fair, is a very cool and powerful email client) is its use of proprietary file formats. Makes stuff like this SO hard.
Since occasionally Gmail informed me of the 15 GB limitation, I had to go in and deleted a lot of mails with big attachments, and even some old emails. Can Thunderbird save my old emails, and subsequently I can delete mails for Gmail account to free up some space ?
Yes. In Thunderbird move the emails you want to save to local folders. Those are on your PC only. You can then delete them from Gmail.
@@askleonotenboom Thanks, Leo.
Hi Leo and thanks for the great work you do for us:
A major problem happened a few days ago when, all my emails in Tb moved from the "inbox " folder to the "deleted" folder. If I receive an email when Tb is stopped, it goes in "inbox" of my emails service provider. As soon as Tb is active all the the emails go to "deleted"
I have an acronis 2024 full backup that is less than a week old, what do you recommend to do to correct the problem?
Thanks a lot
Note:
I'd review to see if you have any filters or rules at play, within Thunderbird, or online.
@@askleonotenboom Thanks Leo, after following your advice, all the incoming emails are now in " courrier entrant (french version)'', but when I try to erase one located in 'incoming emails' I have a message that all emails in the trash folderwill be automatically erase. Any emails that I erase doesn't move to the "trash folder". Do you have any idea why theses emails don't move to the "Trash folder" after erasing them in the "Courrier entrant (incoming folder) ?
PS: The "trash'' folder is set to not delete any eamils .... ???
Thanks a lot for your help
You didn’t actually show the email was backed up, you only showed it was accessible via Thunderbird. You ideally need to point out where on the C: drive the file is and and/or demonstrate you can access it offline from the internet. But good intro to using Thunderbird though. I, so far, find I need to manually click on sub folders before they may be downloaded.
how much space do you have with thunderbird?
However much space is on your computer's hard disk.
Gmail some how lost 80% of my mail. Google said they can't help. No idea how this loss happened. I do still have all of my gmail stored in Thunderbird, How can I keep Thunderbird from lossing all of my current backed up Gmail from also getting lost ?
While offline, move the email you want to preserve into local folders within Thunderbird that are OUTSIDE of the Gmail folder tree.
Will this backup my "sent" emails also?
It depends on your email service, but for most, yes.
Great instructional video! However, my entire goal is to import all my Gmail email from the past 20+ years into Thunderbird and then delete my emails from Gmail so I can quit paying Gmail for the 100 gig monthly storage space. But every single time I open Thunderbird, it starts downloading all the emails all over again. I figured once it has loaded all my emails it should only be checking for and downloading new emails since it had last been running. What am I missing here?
It should only download them once. Are you sure it isn;t just taking a LONG time? With that much email I'd expect it to take many days.
Hello great video nice information is Thunderbird safe to use as a desktop app and not have it link to a servers Can you use Thunderbird by itself as Desktop applilcation to recieve emails and send emails i am guessing you can add only one email per site Basically What i wanted to do was have business email to a website so i would have some contact with people who visit it the website has hosting on it but no c-panel so i am looking for altertives that are safe to use and i am not sure about using Namecheap private email Thanks in advance be safe there God bless you and your Family
Thunderbird is only available for Windows ? how about iOS ?
Windows, MacOS, Linux. It's not designed for mobile or tablet OSes..