How to back-up your e-mail
Although we automatically do backups of e-mail, this backup is only used in emergency situations such as greater hardware failers and situations like that. Therefore, we’ve made this tutorial on how you can backup your emails yourself, in case your own computer crashes or is lost.
Outlook Express
In order to backup mail files in Outlook Express, look for the following directories in your system:
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Identities\
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Express\
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Express\
The address book is normally located in the following directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\
You can simply make a copy of these folders and keep them a secure place.
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird saves all your email, your address book, bookmarks, etc., in the “Profile” folder, which is located here (if you use Windows):
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\
Alternatively, you can use a free program such as MozBackup, which will easily make backups (and restore them) of your email, address book, Firefox bookmarks and much more.
Apple Mail
For Apple Mail you can use a free program, Email Backup 2.0, which can backup both Apple Mail and Thunderbird for OS X. Alternatively you can make a copy of the files in:
~/Library/Mail
This means the folder “Mail” that is in the library folder inside your own user folder.
It’s better to save the copies another place than on your own computer. For example, you can burn them on a CD/DVD or transfer to a USB thumb drive. If you worry about the security of your backups, you can encrypt them with TrueCrypt (a free program for encryption of files).