Back up email accounts

A simple backup tool for an entire account should be available.
I can’t figure out an elegant way to backup my accounts. Every approach seems gross.

You can backup eM Client either automatically via periodic backups via “Menu / Settings (Preferences) / General / Backup” or you can regularly manually backup anytime via “Menu / Backup” (Pc) or “File / Backup” (Mac).

eM Client by default backs up to “a dated backup.zip file” in your “Documents / eM Client” user profile folder.

If you do manually backup, you can see when the backup is complete in “Show Operations” via clicking the drop-down on the right of Refresh.

If you then need to restore for any reason, you can simple restore via “Menu / File / Restore”.

The built-in backup “backs up everything” in eM Client including accounts.

eM Client backup documentation

https://www.emclient.com/webdocumentation/en/9.2/emclient/default.htm#Settings/Backup.htm

1 Like

Hi cyberzork
Thanks for the response. It isn’t exactly what I want. I have an email account. I want to backup only that account.
I want to see in the local directory this account.
I then want to clear out emails from the server. Does this make sense?
Also, I had a hard drive crash and lost my database.
I have another computer with most of the same files. I can’t seem to figure out how to import those files.

It isn’t exactly what I want. I have an email account. I want to backup only that account.

The built-in backup is designed “to backup everything including all accounts” and you carnt just specify to only backup specific accounts.

I want to see in the local directory this account.
I then want to clear out emails from the server.

eM Client has in Settings and eg: Auto Archive option where you can set any mail account to automatically archive mail older than X days and move it to a Local Archive folder. That keeps the same folder structure as your mail account

Or you can eg: manually create a folder down in “Local Folders” at the bottom left of eM Client called eg: Old account mail", and then create folders under that whatever you like and then drag / move any account emails to those folders.

Or if you have eM Client V10, you can also go to “Menu / Data files” and create a (.emdf) data file externally in a folder on your hard-disk, to then drag / move any account emails to that data file. You can then create mail folders under that data file called whatever you like.

The data file then appears “under your email accounts” at the bottom left “above local folders”, where you can then leave it there permanently mounted to update messages whenever you want, as some users do, or you can unmount the data file if you don’t need it allways open.

I have another computer with most of the same files. I can’t seem to figure out how to import those files.

If you only want to transfer specific account emails to another computers eM Client installation, you can either go to “Menu / File / Export” and export in .eml files to a folder on your hard-disk, and then copy those messages to your other computer and then import those into eM Client via “Menu / File / Import” & choose .eml.

Or if you have eM Client V10, you could unmount the (.emdf) data file with the account messages from eM Client on the first computer and then copy that file to your other eM Client installation on the second computer. Then go to “Menu / Data file” and mount that data file and then drag the messages to whatever account you want.

Note: if you do put any messages in Local Folders or in a Data File, “make sure you backup eM Client regularly” and “also backup wherever the data file folder is” to another drive “in case of hard-disk failures as you said”. You can then easily restore.

"The built-in backup is designed “to backup everything including all accounts” "

I must admit I was extremely skeptical when you first suggested this but unfortunately my skepticism was well founded. The backup crashed at about 22 GB

It seems to me like a poorly thought out way of archiving emails.

This is the ugly solution that I have settled on. I would like to organize and store in a much more open source method. I endured lots of aggravation with windows live mail and the horrible upgrades that I was forced to endure. My fear is that this product will like wise get ‘upgraded’ and I will have to look else where for something that actually works. When that happens, getting my emails out of here is a concern.

The backup crashed at about 22 GB.

That usually means eM Client detected an error in a message or messages and couldn’t then continue.

Try closing eM Client and then “manually running the database repair” as per @garys post below and then try running the backup again. Sometimes that can fix it if it is a database error.

Also suggest to “reboot your computer before running the backup again”, just incase there was possibly a resident program that may have been running and might have interfered with eM Client.

Note:- I had the backup stop once when eg: a friend of mine imported 1000’s of old Outlook messages into her eM Client where some of the messages were corrupted with eg: weird hieroglyphics in some emails. I had to delete those corrupted messages to then get the backup working. So if the backup still stops, then could be there is possibly some corrupted messages.