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IMAP Email Backup

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31–40 of 82 posts

Re: IMAP Email Backup

#32
post #13

Thunderbird is your desktop client that can archive, compress, and store all emails offline. I've even used Thunderbird for migrating all my email history, folders etc. between servers: simply add new account and drag and drop folders between accounts. Simple enough to be used by non technical people who do not want to: >./imapgrab.py -d -v -f ~/user@email.com -s imap.mail.server -S -p 993 -u user@email.com -p passwo…

Around two years ago Thunderbird crapped out on me and deleted all my archives. I've also lost emails when moving large (O(10^3)) IMAP folders.

Not sure how much work has been done on Thunderbird but I do an IMAP backup before archiving or making structural changes.

I should probably have an automated download for backup purposes set up ...

Re: IMAP Email Backup

#34
post #13

Thunderbird is your desktop client that can archive, compress, and store all emails offline. I've even used Thunderbird for migrating all my email history, folders etc. between servers: simply add new account and drag and drop folders between accounts. Simple enough to be used by non technical people who do not want to: >./imapgrab.py -d -v -f ~/user@email.com -s imap.mail.server -S -p 993 -u user@email.com -p passwo…

Be careful using Thunderbird to move mail between IMAP4 servers, on Linux at least - I've had it lose messages on me, deleting them from the source before they're successfully written to the destination. I was moving mail from a Gmail account to a Gandi account about a year ago, before the recent spurt of development activity on Thunderbird.

>I've had it lose messages on me, deleting them from the source before they're successfully written to the destination.

Copy folders then?

Re: IMAP Email Backup

#36
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried this recently for moving from outlook.com to mailbox.org and it was painfully slow. Because it fetched every message individually, it would get throttled at about 10 messages/second. I wrote my own thing using IMAPclient in python and it was a hundred times quicker.

I have moved more than 2000 mailboxes with over a terabyte of data with it. Worked well for me.

[deleted]

Re: IMAP Email Backup

#37
post #13

Thunderbird is your desktop client that can archive, compress, and store all emails offline. I've even used Thunderbird for migrating all my email history, folders etc. between servers: simply add new account and drag and drop folders between accounts. Simple enough to be used by non technical people who do not want to: >./imapgrab.py -d -v -f ~/user@email.com -s imap.mail.server -S -p 993 -u user@email.com -p passwo…

I have really bad memory's about a Thunderbird migration, tried to move mails from ~exchange2003-time, but they where on a modern dovecot server, after i moved them everything was completely scrambled, tried with sylpheed and everything was perfect it even was much faster.

Re: IMAP Email Backup

#38
post #13

Thunderbird is your desktop client that can archive, compress, and store all emails offline. I've even used Thunderbird for migrating all my email history, folders etc. between servers: simply add new account and drag and drop folders between accounts. Simple enough to be used by non technical people who do not want to: >./imapgrab.py -d -v -f ~/user@email.com -s imap.mail.server -S -p 993 -u user@email.com -p passwo…

Be careful using Thunderbird to move mail between IMAP4 servers, on Linux at least - I've had it lose messages on me, deleting them from the source before they're successfully written to the destination. I was moving mail from a Gmail account to a Gandi account about a year ago, before the recent spurt of development activity on Thunderbird.

The trick here is to not close the program while the move is taking place (or so I've found). Also using copy over move is a bit better. Stupid bug though, I know :p.

Re: IMAP Email Backup

#39
I use offlineimap to sync mail locally and then periodically backup the mail folders to an encrypted USB drive. Using Protonmail with ProtonBridge to pull it down.

Re: IMAP Email Backup

#40
post #13

Thunderbird is your desktop client that can archive, compress, and store all emails offline. I've even used Thunderbird for migrating all my email history, folders etc. between servers: simply add new account and drag and drop folders between accounts. Simple enough to be used by non technical people who do not want to: >./imapgrab.py -d -v -f ~/user@email.com -s imap.mail.server -S -p 993 -u user@email.com -p passwo…

I've used the ImportExportTools NG Thunderbird addon to do the migration. I.e. right-click on all folders I want to download, start a new Thunderbird for the new mail provider, right-click on the new, empty folders and upload to them.
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