How to back up webmail emails

Before beginning, there is one caveat: your webmail account must support the Pop3 email-delivery protocol. Most Windows email programs use this to collect email anyway. When it comes to the main webmail services, Hotmail supports Pop3 by default but the protocol needs to be enabled and configured in Gmail and Yahoo Mail. To do this in Gmail, log in to your account in the usual way then click Settings, followed by Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Now select the ‘Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded)’ radio button. From the dropdown menu below, choose ‘keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox’ then click the Save Changes button.

To do the same in Yahoo Mail, log in at http://mail.yahoo.com and click Options followed by Mail Options. In the left-hand pane, select POP & Forwarding and then click to select the ‘Allow your Yahoo! Mail to be POPed’ radio button. Choose one of the spam options from the dropdown menu – it’s up to you whether or not you would like to download and back up suspected spam along with other messages. Click Save Changes.

Any email program capable of collecting Pop3 messages can be used to back up messages stored in a webmail account. If you want to use your existing email program then the broad thrust of the remaining steps should help you get the job done. However, as it is impossible for us to give instructions for every email program in existence, we will focus on just one: the free Thunderbird application, from the same developer that makes the Firefox web browser. Click here to go to the Thunderbird website to download and install this. Click the Free Download button and, if the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and then choose a location for the downloaded file. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder. Now double-click the downloaded file to launch the installation wizard. Choose the Standard installation option and click to remove the tick from the box labelled ‘Use Thunderbird as my default mail application’ – this will prevent the program from dethroning an existing email program and ring-fence Thunderbird as the tool to use for webmail backups.

At the last stage of the installation wizard, keep the ‘Launch Mozilla Thunderbird now’ box ticked and click Finish. If you are asked whether you would like to import settings from another email program, select the ‘Don’t import anything’ radio button and click Next. The program will begin with a request to set up a new email account. Click Cancel at this point because there are other settings to deal with first. Next, you may encounter a message again offering to make Thunderbird the default program for email, newsgroups and feeds. Click to remove the ticks from all active options and don’t worry about those that are greyed out. Also remove the tick from the ‘Always perform this check when starting Thunderbird’ box, to prevent being bothered by this same message in future. Now click OK.

Thunderbird should now show a two-pane view. In the right-hand pane, scroll down to find the Accounts section and click the ‘Create a new account’ link. Give the an account a name, such as Gmail Backup, and type the relevant email address and password. Click to tick the box marked ‘Remember password’ and click Continue. At this stage it doesn’t matter whether the address is Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail: Thunderbird will examine what you have typed and use the known settings for that provider. These settings are tested and the results will be displayed on the next screen.

If all is well the Mail Account Setup dialogue box should appear, displaying green light icons next to the verified settings. Now choose the POP radio button (the ‘recommended’ IMAP option reflects what is on the mail server, rather than downloading copies of messages to the local PC, so isn’t appropriate for backup purposes). Click Edit to change any of these settings or click Create Account to confirm.

The new account appears in the left-hand pane in the main Thunderbird window. Avoid clicking the Get Mail button at this stage, as there are a couple more settings that need to be tweaked for the program to act only as a webmail-backup tool. Click the email address (or account name) in the left-hand pane followed by the View settings for this account link – this opens the Account Settings dialogue box.

It’s very important to ensure that Thunderbird does not delete anything from the mail server when it downloads messages, or the process of backing up will empty the webmail account. In the Account Settings dialogue box, click Server Settings on the left-hand side and click to tick the box labelled ‘Leave messages on server’. Now click to remove the ticks from the ‘For at most’ and ‘Until I delete them’ boxes. This ensures that Thunderbird will not remove anything from the webmail account, but merely download backup copies of messages.

Now click the Junk Settings option below the account email address or name. Junk filtering isn’t really necessary, as Google, Yahoo and Hotmail have their own spam-filtering systems so unwanted messages will likely have been deleted already. For this reason, it’s a good idea to disable Thunderbird’s own spam system, so remove the tick from the ‘Enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account’ box. Also remove the tick from the ‘Trust junk mail headers set by’ and ‘Move new junk messages to’ boxes. Then click OK.

Click Get Mail to begin the first backup. Webmail accounts provide a large amount of storage, so there may be hundreds or even thousands of messages to be downloaded. If necessary, leave it overnight to continue downloading all the mail. Once complete, you will find local copies of all the messages stored on your webmail provider’s servers. To back up any new messages, run Thunderbird again and the backup will be ‘topped up’ with any mail that has arrived since it was last run.