I’m in the process of closing one of my web sites and needing to save the email folders and messages off of it. If I can get to all the old messages once the web site is closed, I’ll be able to solve problems or get information for a client.
The web admin tools were tried on the host and a way was found to download the entire site. I looked around the files and could see the folders, but the messages could only be opened in a text editor. This was closer to what was needed, but not ideal. I discovered a mail section in the file admin tool and thought it was the answer. The entire email hierarchy was visible and this looked promising. After searching several times I found an export button, but it wasn’t active and couldn’t be used. Another dead-end!
Yesterday or the day before, a web search was done on exporting mail from my web host. Several tools were mentioned and one of them was Thunderbird, an email client. Thunderbird has been around for twenty years and I’ve used it a little years ago. It works in Microsoft windows and Linux. It was downloaded, installed and opened. It was so easy to use use. It allowed me to download my many email accounts. All I needed was the email address and password for each account. Thunderbird interrogated the email server and found the correct outgoing and incoming ports and other settings for each account. It was amazing.
I’ve installed it on two computers so far and will probably be more computers later. Thunderbird allows me to get to my old messages even when I’m off-line. Check it out and toss Microsoft Outlook.
