Back Up for email???

[Sonny Jenkins]

Being an habitual email "saver",,,not wanting to delete emails, and using Tbird or OE (with no effective means of backing up),,,I've come to the conclusion that the best way to preserve is to use a web based service i.e. gmail,,etc.

Any comments????

[Mitch Drumm]

Sonny:

You can backup your Thunderbird mail manually this way:

Set your PC to view hidden and system files.

Navigate to C users yourusername appdata roaming and look for a subfolder called Thunderbird.

Copy that entire Thunderbird folder to a safe backup location. It contains your email, address book, accounts, etc.

Do it once a month and all you would ever lose is the most recent month's mail. Do it more often if you want.

Web mail has its advantages, but I don't like to go through the log in process to quickly get at mail.

I think there are doo-dads that can download your web mail in Thunderbird.

[Sonny Jenkins]

Hey Mitch,,,thank you VERY much for that bit of information,,now if I just had enough sense to know how to,,,"Set my PC to view hidden and system files.

Navigate to C users yourusername appdata roaming and look for a subfolder called Thunderbird."

That sounds like something that would get me to what I had in mind,,,,which is to put all my emails onto ,,say,,,a usb drive,,,plug that drive into my computer,,,or any computer with Thunderbird installed,,,and pull up my emails (not necessarily put them back on my C drive). Does that sound like something that could be done??

[Wiz Feinberg]

Hey Mitch,,,thank you VERY much for that bit of information,,now if I just had enough sense to know how to,,,"Set my PC to view hidden and system files.

Navigate to C users yourusername appdata roaming and look for a subfolder called Thunderbird."

You didn't tell us what operating system the computer is running, so I'll give you directions that apply to Windows XP.

1. Open My Computer
2. Go to the menu bar item "Tools" (or, "Organize" in Vista) (the menu bar is just under the title bar of the window).
3. Click on the option "Folder Options"
4. Click on the "View" tab on top
5. Place a check mark in "Display the contents of system folders"
6. Place a dot in "Show hidden files and folders"
7. Uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types"
8. Click APPLY
9. Click OK to close the Folder Options window

To get directly to the section where application data files and folders reside, do this...

1. Click on the START button
2. Click on "RUN" on the right side
3. Type this into the Run input field: %AppData%
4. Press the Enter key ("Execute" in "Lost")
5. Assuming you have followed the first group of instructions, your application data folders will now open in a window.
6. Find and open the folder/sub-folder where your personal data files reside.

Do as you will with these files. Copy them to a thumbdrive, or usb disk and transfer them as needed. Just remember to transfer email files with the email client closed. If it is open the changes will not take.

[Mitch Drumm]

Sonny:

If you drill down into that Thunderbird folder, you will come to a profiles folder. Within that, you will see a folder with a random name, like tue55j88hp9.default. Inside that you will see a mail folder.

Inside that you should see a folder called local folders. Inside that you will whatever folders you use in Thunderbird. You can open these folders with something like Word or Wordpad, but a lot of it will be gibberish.

So, no, you wouldn't want to read your mail by navigating to this folder.

Think of it as an emergency backup. If you get a new PC, you can install Thunderbird on it and then just copy this entire Thunderbird folder to the EXACT same location on the new machine and bingo--you are set up and ready to go.