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One question, why do you need to back up your emails in bulk.  Surely you only need to save important ones to your documents.

Personally I like to keep almost everything. I delete obvious junk and then file every other email (in- and out-going) in a file structure similar to that in my documents folder. That way I can always use the Outlook search feature to find anything of interest - for instance my wife recently asked me when and where we stayed in Langkawi some years ago - instant answer: the Pelangi Beach Resort in 2003. No it's not "important", but it's interesting (to me at least) and storage is so cheap and backup is so simple why not keep it just in case? Saving emails into the documents folder sounds a bit time consuming and messy to me.

FWIW I don't use webmail or cloud storage; I don't trust anyone else with my data, either from a security point of view and/or I don't trust them not to misuse my data, use it for advertising, etc. (yes Google, Apple, Microsoft I'm talking about you). For emails I've always used Outlook and stored my emails locally; I also have my own domain for emails so I have several email addresses that I use for different things.

Anyway, each to their own, etc.

While we are no closer to determining the cause of the initial problems, I think the OP needs to make some decisions.

1. How they wish to access email on an ongoing basis – webmail or email client
2. If using an email client, how they wish to set this up – pop or imap
3. Make sure webmail and email clients have correct retention policies for your needs
4. Back it up – whether that is using a manual drag and drop on individual emails to a local folder, or Outlook/Thunderbird inbuilt backup process, or something else, make at least one other copy of the most important stuff that you cannot afford to lose
5. Get used to updating your backup whenever there is a change/daily/weekly/monthly and regularly check that the backup can still be accessed

Before making any changes, I would suggest looking at step 4 above as a priority.

I couldn't agree more about backup being the most important step for any important data.

Funnily enough my 12-year old (I still have the online order email from 2013!) backup system (a Buffalo NAS server with two mirrored disks) packed up on Sunday so I lost all of my most recent backups and frantically updated a set of my offline backups, which were at least six months old.

My backup schedule is an automatic daily incremental backup of all changed files and then weekly or monthly automated full backups of important folders. It may seem a bit over the top, but I'm a bit of a geek about that sort of thing.

A new Synology NAS server is on its way!

Thank you.
It seems all is not lost.
I have had Windows Live mail on my desktop since the days of XP.  I really like it.
When I got the laptop (second hand) a couple of months ago it was never intended to be for my  main use, just something to take away with me to keep up with things.
Windows didn`t seem to have an email programme I could find for the laptop so that`s why I downloaded Thunderbird.
It has totally emptied my BT mailbox and downloaded everything that was there. Inbox and deleted messages - the lot. 
I ended up with hundreds of deleted emails which had  stayed on BT.
I have spent quite a few hours on Thunderbird going through them all manually and deleting those I really don`t want.
Many were multiple notifications of replies from Rootchat  and   emails from Ebay etc.

 Then I started on Outlook on the desktop. Thankfully everything there was unaffected, I had folders for various people / subjects and they were still there. Some I had forgotten about. There are some from 2012 when I first started an interest in History.

 I have been playing with both Thunderbird and Outlook and it seems that when an email comes to me through from BT it  goes to both of them.
I deleted the unwanted ones  permanently  and they were removed from BT as well.
I think I need to keep a weekly check on them all. 
I also found  all previous emails   from  quite a while ago that had been saved to a folder when I had my desktop updated to 10. The shop I took it to did that for me. I never was about to find them till recently. 

I now want to know  how do I save emails to a folder myself on my hard drive or even a memory stick.
Thank again.

I have been using Outlook on a Windows desktop since at least 1999 (I ordered some CDs from Amazon in October of that year and still have the email) and have all my emails stored in a large folder structure; I tend to file or delete new emails once a week or have a daily automated backup system. New emails are downloaded to Outlook whenever I open it and removed from the mail server at the same time.

There is only one* file that needs backing up:
C:\Users\<Username>\Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst

*Mine got too large so I created another, so in my casee are two files.

The pst file (or files) can be copied into the same folder on another machine and will immediately work with a local Outlook installation there; I do this when I travel with a laptop and then just copy them back to my desktop when I return, replacing the old ones.

That system has served me well and I see no reason to change it.

Yes its's been weird for a while. The two letters and then no more search is annoying, but even worse for me is when I enter a location and then try to select one of the ones offered it returns me to the previously entered information (names, dates, locations, etc). I find that the only way to fix it is to go back in, enter the names and dates, remove the current location, perform the search I don't want with a blank location and then go in again and enter the locatioon into the now blank space. Then it works. Until the next time.

It's been driving me mad for several weeks, but I doubt it will ever get fixed.

You will perhaps find that Publisher is not included in the purchase, only Word, excel and powerpoint is.

I upgraded my PC last year and bought Office (Word, Excel & PowerPoint) and a standalone version of Publisher.

A good publishing alternative to Microsofts own is Affinity Publisher.

You're right, Office 2021 doesn't include Publisher (or Access); I only use Word, Excel and Outlook so I didn't notice. Office 2019 Pro Plus does include Publisher and Access though and that is only £24 on Amazon.