As someone not particularly IT savvy I was wondering if there is any em Client guidance on backing up my emails and folders. In particular… How to backup, where is the data stored (cloud or local), how can I assess how big the backup would be before doing it (I have a lot of old email filed), can I do incremental backups, etc? Any advice or guidance really appreciated thanks.
I did see there is this blog entry about the topic: How to do a Backup of eM Client data | eM Client
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Hi Lancealot, thanks for your useful advice. I found a backup option in the Main menu. I clicked ‘Backup’ and it immediately started running in the background (invisible). Then about 20 mins later it said ‘Backup complete’. However, I have no idea where the backup is stored or how large it is?
Are my options limited because I’m on the free version, or am I missing something? Any further advice or guidance welcome from anyone. thanks.
You can see when the backup is completed once started via clicking “Menu / Operations”
You can then check the size of it in your "User Profile Documents eM Client folder. It will be a dated backup.zip file. Example eM Client V9 backup for Windows below.
Note:- I also setup the daily periodic backups via “Menu / Settings / General / Backup” and keep the last 3 backups and also then copy / sync the 3 backups daily to external and cloud drives just in case.
C:\user\yourname\Documents\EM Client
Thank you Cyberzork, really appreciate you taking the time to reply and I hope your info will help others too. 
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I have moved all the old files [older than 01/01/2021] to an “Archive” folder and, when I do a backup, it includes all the moved files. Can I backup without a specified folder [otherwise, I will not save any space!]
A backup is a complete snapshot of the database as it exists at that time. You can’t exclude a folder from the backup. Sorry.
But you wouldn’t want to do that anyway. If you restored the backup, the current database will be replaced by what is in the backup file, so you would be missing the Archive folder and that data would be irreversibly lost.
Hi
Thanks for our reply BUT your [Em client’s] version of Archive is clearly not the same as mine.
Em client’s version seems to be to move emails from the server to an Archive folder locally - I have no idea why but my version is that all emails are stored locally in folders anyway, and that little is kept on the server AND my Backup is nearly 424 Mb in size and takes a nearly 20 minutes to run, whereas if I haven’t looked at emails older than a year, why would I keep them anyway?
I have managed to move all emails with a Sent date older than 01/01/2021 to the Archive folder and will keep a copy of that Backup elsewhere, while running the Backup again without the contents of the Archive folder. That way, I can save space and running time for my daily backup, while keeping a copy of all the earlier emails should I need them later.
btw, I am not expecting Em Client to change it’s methodology, now that I have found out what I need to do to achieve my aims
Regards
Dave B.
There are two types of archiving in eM Client; server-side and Automatic Archiving.
Server-side archiving depends on the server having a special folder for that purpose. If it does, when you click on a message in eM Client, you will have an Archive button. Clicking on that will move the email from the folder it is in, to the server-side Archive folder. This is a manual process and you will need to do it for every message you want to archive.
Automatic Archiving, as it says in the settings, will move older messages to the Archive folder stored locally. The purpose of this is to reduce space you use on the server, and declutter your IMAP folders. This is an automatic process that runs on a schedule, moving messages past a certain age from the server to local folders.