We’re occasionally asked how to archive email messages from our servers to a customer’s own computer. You might want to do this to create a permanent copy of the mail before you cancel our service, or to reduce the amount of server disk storage used by large email messages.

If you’re just making a copy of a few messages, you can use our Webmail pages. When you’re looking at a message, click Download as .eml from the “three dots” menu in the top-right corner.

If you want to copy or move a large number of messages, though, you should set up an email program on your own computer to make IMAP connections to the mailbox, then drag the messages to copy them to your own computer. You can use almost any modern mail program to do this.

The sections below describe how to do this in a few popular programs:

• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Microsoft Outlook for Windows
• Apple Mail

Mozilla Thunderbird

The free Mozilla Thunderbird mail program is easy to set up; just follow our normal instructions to make it read your mail.

Then click File > New Folder and create a new “local folder” — that is, a folder on your own computer, not the server. The choice will look similar to this:

After you do this, the new folder will appear in the left column. Just drag the messages or folders from the server Inbox to the local folder you created. (You can Select All and drag a large number at once to save time.) This will move them from the server to the Thunderbird folder on your own computer, where you can always access them.

By default, dragging messages in Thunderbird moves them (deleting the original server copy). If you hold down the option key on a Mac or the ctrl key on Windows, it will make a copy of the messages, leaving a copy on the server as well.

If you want to go beyond moving mail to folders on your own computer, the free ImportExportTools add-on for Thunderbird can save mail to your computer in many other formats. For example, you can connect to your mailbox with us and export a folder of messages as a “.mbox” format file on your computer, which you can then import into many other programs.

Microsoft Outlook for Windows

First, set up the Microsoft Outlook program on your computer so that it can read your mail.

Then go to the File tab, click Info in the left column, and choose Clean Up Old Items... from “Tools”:

In the resulting window, choose Archive this folder and all subfolders into a “.pst” file on your computer:

Set the “Archive items older than” option to whatever date you prefer, then click OK and Outlook will start archiving them.

After they’re archived, they will appear in a new folder in the left column of your mail view. The folder will usually have the name “Archives” and be at the bottom of your normal folder list. To view the archived mail, first open the triangle next to “Archives”, then next to “Inbox”:

Archiving automatically in Outlook

If you don’t want to do this manually, Microsoft has a page explaining how you can set up Outlook to continuously archive mail automatically.

Apple Mail

First, set up the Apple Mail program on your computer so that it can read your mail.

Then click the Mailbox menu and choose New Mailbox (confusingly, this “New Mailbox” option creates a new folder in Apple Mail). Choose “On My Mac” as the destination, which creates a new folder on your own computer:

After you do this, the new folder will appear in the left column. Just drag the messages or folders from the server Inbox to the local folder you created. (You can choose Select All from the Edit menu and drag a large number at once to save time.) This will move them from the server to the Apple Mail folder on your own computer, where you can always access them.

By default, dragging messages in Apple Mail moves them (deleting the original server copy). If you hold down the option key while dragging, it will make a copy of the messages, leaving a copy on the server as well.