Mozilla Thunderbird: archiving emails with an email client
Thunderbird is a free open-source email client from Mozilla, also known for the Firefox browser, which allows you to export individual emails in EML or email archives in MBOX.
Retrieving webmail
- Open Mozilla Thunderbird. If you have not used Thunderbird before, you will be asked to set up your email. Enter your name, email address and password, and click 'Continue'.
- Thunderbird searches your email servers for incoming and outgoing email. Select 'IMAP' and click 'Done'.
If everything is filled in correctly, you will receive a message that your account has been successfully created. You may first be redirected to your email provider (e.g. Gmail) to confirm your account and give Thunderbird permission to retrieve your emails.
- Thunderbird will now start retrieving all emails.
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. Or right-click on the message itself and choose 'Save As'.
Select a folder where you want to save the email and choose the format 'Email files'.
- De e-mail werd als een EML-bestand opgeslagen.
Bulk export emails with ImportExportTools NG
You can use the ImportExportTools NG extension (add-on) in Thunderbird to easily bulk export emails. This tool provides additional export options to Thunderbird.
ImportExportTools NG installeren
- Ga naar 'Instellingen'
- Klik onderaan op 'Add-ons en thema's'
- Zoek naar importexport
- Wanneer je de add-on gevonden hebt, kies je voor 'Toevoegen aan Thunderbird'.
- Je krijgt een medlding met de vraag of je de add-on echt wil toevoegen. Wanneer je dit bevestigd, is ImportExportTools geïnstalleerd.
- 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'.
- 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.
