Thunderbird email

[farmeroman]

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.

[wilcoxon]

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

 Goodness I would never had found that. But, I tried and got as far as Outlook and the next folder was empty.
To be honest I`m not that confident anyway.
I would have to be sure I `m only copying and that there is no danger of losing them

[farmeroman]

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

 Goodness I would never had found that. But, I tried and got as far as Outlook and the next folder was empty.
To be honest I`m not that confident anyway.
I would have to be sure I `m only copying and that there is no danger of losing them

Copy instead of move is easy:

Right button -> Copy
Right button -> Paste

I don't know why the Outlook folder was empty though; there should be three folders and a few other files in it. Must have the wrong path somehow or possibly permissions are set to "hidden".

[LizzieW]

To save important emails to folders, I open the email, click on File at the top left hand corner and "Save As", then just choose the file/folder you want the email to go to.  I have my files in My Documents.  I have files for Orders/Despatched/Completed,  Tradespeople, Holidays, Investments etc. so I never lose an email.  Once you've saved an email, you can delete it from Thunderbird.

My husband uses Outlook but I don't like that.  I prefer less Microsoft whenever possible.

[AngusMcCoatup]

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.

[farmeroman]

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!

[LizzieW]

Interestingly, when my laptop packed up and I found my external drive hadn't been working either, once the laptop was up and running again and I downloaded Thunderbird, all the last approx 3 months of emails downloaded as well into Deleted!

[wilcoxon]

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

I don't know why the Outlook folder was empty though; there should be three folders and a few other files in it. Must have the wrong path somehow or possibly permissions are set to "hidden".


Perhaps there is nothing  there because I don`t  use Outlook, I use Windows Live mail 2012.
I can`t find anything hidden in files for that, so am stuck on that .

The emails that were backed up to my Desktop are  from when I had my PC updated to W10, they  go back to 2015 and open with Windows Live 2012.

They are in a folder saved in Documents and it`s pretty hard to locate the right one, but it is "Storage Folder" and everything is there. I guess I could save that to a memory stick in case they are needed.  Anything from 2023 to now hasn`t been backed up and I don`t know how to do it.
This is my Desktop.

AngusMcCoatup.
I have no idea what the difference is between webmail or email client.
 I wouldn`t know the difference between pop or imap.
 I apologise but it`s way out of my depth.

Thunderbird on Laptop.
Even though it downloaded all the incoming and deleted emails from BT there is nothing that was in my folders on Windows Live. Would that be because it`s another programme ?

I can`t see any obvious way to back up Thunderbird on the programme itself.  Neither on Windows Live.

I looked at installing Thunderbird on my desktop as well but I really don`t  understand it at all.

So to cut a long story short I still can`t see how to export / back up emails in bulk.
I will give saving to my Desktop a go, that seems to be the easiest for now.

Thanks everyone for your patience and I apologise for seeming so dumb. 

 I am much better if finding John Jones, son of John Jones and Mary Jones in Bala than this . 

[LizzieW]

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