Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

How to copy email folders & their messages to ext. media?

Apr 25, 2018 3:09PM PDT

Over the years and on several e-mail accounts (Prodigy, AT&T, Yahoo! & gmail), I've accumulated a huge number of emails with family history information that I'd like to save onto some external media (disks, cloud etc.) to guard against losing that information should any of those email systems suddenly disappear (as happened years ago, of course, with the venerable but ancient Prodigy).

I know that I could now access each message and copy/paste then individually or such ... but that would take forever and would likely be subject to various errors (due to user fatigue, boredom etc.).

Is there any way to copy email messages wholesale -- say a folder at a time -- to external media that would retain all the messages' information (including links) so that content could be accessed/read at a later time, even if the original email system is no longer operational?

I look forward to your detailed instructions and pointers.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Clarification Request
Would have to know a lot more.
Apr 25, 2018 3:13PM PDT

For example some of these email stores like the usual Outlook PST requires Outlook to read and use what's in the PST file. There is no loss of information when we copy this file to backups but to restore access we have to put it where Outlook expected it.

Similar rules for other mail apps.

- Collapse -
Re: How to copy email folders & their messages to ext. media
Apr 25, 2018 3:38PM PDT

Sorry, but I don't know how any of the email systems work under the covers. (I don't know what a PST file is or how to access it.)

I'm looking for "how to" step-by-step instructions on how to save -- ideally folder-by-folder (each of which contain a dozen or more individual e-mails) -- the information that I have in many hundreds of messages currently containted in Yahoo!, AT&T & gmail email systems so that content can be later accessed independent of the email system. (These are not MSFT Outlook email systems, as far as I know.)

I would think that many people before me may have become concerned that the disappearance of their email vendor/system could jeopardize their access to their information. Are there solutions out there?

- Collapse -
There may be a step by step.
Apr 25, 2018 3:43PM PDT

But each one will have it's own procedure and as noted many of these, like the Outlook PST file will not be usable until the file is restored with the app to use it.

-> The email systems you noted all seem to be WEB EMAIL. Let's look at how to research how to backup our Gmail.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Step+by+step+how+to+backup+my+gmail+emails

So it seems this is out there for the taking. Change the word Gmail to Yahoo and ATT to find the others.