Mozilla Thunderbird: archiving emails with an email client

Thunderbird is a free, open source email client from Mozilla that exports individual emails in EML or email archives in MBOX.

Retrieving webmail

• Open Mozilla Thunderbird.

• Click 'Create new account: Email'.
• A new window opens. Select 'Skip and use my existing email address'.

• Enter name, email address and password, and click 'Continue';
• Thunderbird searches your email servers for incoming and outgoing email. Select 'IMAP' and click 'Done'.

• Thunderbird asks for permission to access your emails and then retrieves all messages.

Exporting emails to the folder structure

• Open the message that you want to export;
• In the window, click 'File' and then 'Save as'. Select to save the message as a file.

• Put the email in the correct folder and click 'Save';
• The email is saved as an EML file.

You can install the ImportExportTools NG add-on in Thunderbird, which makes it possible to export multiple emails from your mailbox in EML format.

• Right-click on the folder you want to export;
• Select 'Import/Export in mbox/eml format - Export all messages in the folder - EML format'.

• Select the folder you want to save the emails to and click 'Select folder'.

• You will see the following window. Click 'OK'.

• All emails are saved. A file called 'index.html' is also saved, which is an HTML file with a table of all the emails you have exported.

Saving an email archive in MBOX

• Right-click on the email address you want to archive;
• Select 'Import/export in mbox/eml format' and then 'Export all folders (with structure)'.

• Click 'OK'.

• Select the folder you want to save the email archive to and click 'Select folder';
• Mozilla Thunderbird exports the entire email archive in MBOX. An MBOX file is created for each folder in the mailbox.

Authors: Nastasia Vanderperren (meemoo) with help from Rony Vissers (meemoo) and Pieter De Praetere