My wife replaced her computer so we installed eM Client [6] and went through the restore process (the back-up was to an external hard drive formatted NTFS and the data is approximately 13.7 MB). It appeared to work but did not import any emails. We did this numerous times with the same result. As she is very disciplined about back-ups this was a frustration and a disaster.
In the end I managed to resolve the issue by exporting the actual eml files from the application (i.e. not the back-up file) on the old computer to an external drive and then importing them to the new computer but this is definitely not good as a solution.
Having the back-up on the external drive seemed safer in as much as if she experienced a major (total) computer failure then we would still have the data; however, we have now changed the file path to an eM Client folder on the C drive.
Going forward I would like to understand why the original back-up didn’t work and also be sure that what we are doing now will work if needed. Does anyone have any thoughts please?
My first thought is that 13.7MB is too small for a backup, but then maybe not. A couple of hundred emails without many attachments would be about that. Or if the account was IMAP without anything downloading for offline use.
But if the account is IMAP, then there is no reason to restore it to the new computer, as once you enter the account details on the new machine, it would sync again with the server.
Can you try the backup again, but to the C: drive rather than an external drive.
I have got confused over file sizes (& GBs and MBs) but the issue remains the same.
As per my OP, we are now doing the back-up to the C drive and it is a compressed file of 4.56 GB
The file is in “My Documents” and when my wife takes this over to the external drive (as part of her overall back-up) it seems to decompress into an ordinary file at 13.7 GB.
The key issue for me is how do I test either file to see if it is usable in the case of an emergency?
Compressed files can change their compression rate when moved from one disk to another, that is possible, though I did not see it with my own eM Client backups. Is your wife using a backup application, or is it a direct copy from one disk to the other done through Explorer or a script?
A best way to test the backup is to make a backup in eM Client. Then close eM Client, and copy the backup to your external disk as normal. With eM Client closed, rename C:\Users_username_\AppData\Roaming\eM Client. Say something like \eM Client - old. You may have to show hidden items in Explorer to do that.
When you restart eM Client, it will prompt to setup an account. Just skip that and go to Restore. Choose the My Documents location. When the restore is complete, you will be able to tell if it was successful. Then close eM Client, and delete C:\Users_username_\AppData\Roaming\eM Client. Then test the one form the external disk in the same way. When you have finished the test, close eM Client and delete C:\Users_username_\AppData\Roaming\eM Client, then rename the original directory back to \eM Client\ and restart the application.
Hello, I am sitting with exactly the same problem. I have backups of my husbands now broken/no longer functioning laptop but cannot find the .eml file from which to restore his old emails. I have checked in appdata/roaming - there’s nothing. Only .dat files. can someone assist me?
eM Client does not store it’s messages in .eml files. The data is stored in the .dat files. Try restoring the entire c:\users[user_name]\Appdata\Roaming\eM Client to the same location in the new computer (make sure eM Client is not running when you do this).
Thanks I have done that. However it tells me there are 42 that already exist in the destination folder. I had installed EM Client on the new machine and opened it to try and do the restore from inside the software, and it downloaded all the emails that had been piling up on the email server while the original machine was down. I suspect there are now duplicate files.
