Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Backing up a free email account is best done by downloading it to a PC-based mail program. Some services support it, others need a trick or two.
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Yet another reason I intensely dislike relying on free email accounts for "important" things. There are so many things that can, and do, go wrong it's scary. I hear very sad "I've lost everything" stories on a regular basis.
So you're quite right to want to backup.
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I'd be remiss if I didn't start by recommending my original article Are free email services worth it?. If you're using a free email service as your primary email account, or even worse, as your only business account, you seriously need to reconsider what you're doing.
A pop3 account is, by far, your best way to backup your email. By downloading to your own machine, and then backing up the downloaded mail, you have everything under your control.
But what if, for whatever reason, that's not an option?
Well, your options are very limited. Basically you can try to automatically forward all email to another email address, or you can try to download your email. By forwarding your email to another account on a different free service, you basically got everything backed up at that service. Similarly, by using pop3 access to your free account, you can treat it like any pop3 account and download and back up your mail yourself.
Unfortunately from what I've seen, none of the free email services support either approach directly.
With one exception.
Google's GMail allows you to automatically forward incoming email to another email address, and it allows you POP3 access as well - meaning you can use a traditional mail client on your PC to download and read your email.
So if you're a GMail user, you could create a HotMail account and automatically forward all your mail to it. Or you could configure your PC's email client, like Outlook Express, and periodically download your email to your PC.
But what about other services like Hotmail, or Yahoo? How do you backup that email?
The best I've been able to find so far is that there are services on the internet that claim to be able to forward Hotmail and Yahoo mail, and services and tools that can provide POP3 access. I've not used any, so don't have any specific recommendations. Some are not free, and if you're going to spend money, I'd rather have you get a "real", supported, POP3 email account. I also believe that in most cases in order to use those tools, you'll need to provide your account information; something that, quite honestly makes me nervous. And in all cases, these approaches are not officially supported by Yahoo or Hotmail.
Article C2507 - December 31, 2005
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
I am missing emails from one sender that I saved in hotmail folders only for specific dates. What can I do?
Posted by: Amy at January 5, 2008 6:56 AMThanks
a
Rather than trust Gmail or any other free email provider, I like to set up pop services and manage the messages on my home client. Why let my messages sit on another server where they can be searched without my control? With pop, I can control the messages and can use the email client I like.
Posted by: shalitha hettiarachchi at July 9, 2008 9:24 PMHi Leo, Thanks for all the great advice!
Posted by: Lou at November 25, 2008 1:40 PMI have a lot of folders in gmail where I keep messages I want to refer to at some later date. Is there a way to get gmail to forward those to my computer e-mail program?
Thanks, Lou
be a good person.
Posted by: sunilrafiq at February 6, 2011 5:33 AMI created a new gmail to archive my 2011 yahoo messages. Unfortunately, gmail only copied the (inboxes and the) first two folders, and I have 70 folders. So, I can move all the messages into the first two (alpha) folders, or I can keep re-naming the folders to get each to appear on top, and import messages 35 times (2x35=70). Just seems like a lot of work, maybe I'll find a POP way to manage this. Would be a nice tool to just click archive, have my email archived within the folders that they appear now but archive them (anything older than a certain date) so that will disappear from my current email, but be searchable when I choose an archive search function.
07-Feb-2012