How to Save Emails to Computer

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If you’ve ever felt the need to backup all your e-mails so you have your own personal copy, you’ve come to the right place to know how to do it. If you’re saving work e-mails though, it is recommended to ask your IT department about doing this, so you can avoid legal consequences if it’s prohibited.

Method 1 of 2:

Saving Gmail Messages

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\n"> Head to "Settings." On your Gmail account, click on the gear icon at the top right

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\n"> Go to "Forwarding and POP/IMAP." Advertisement

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Enable POP for all mail. Then set “Keep Gmail’s copy in the inbox” on the drop-down menu in the next option.

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Download and install Thunderbird. It’s a free e-mail program that will help you back up your mail for free.

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Set up Thunderbird. When you first run Thunderbird, it will ask you to set things up. When you get to the login screen, where you type your e-mail address and password, click “Manual setup.”

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\n"> Change IMAP to POP3. This is located beside “Incoming.”

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\n"> Type in “pop.gmail.com” (without the quotes) on the “Incoming” text field.

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\n"> Change the "Port" field to 995.

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\n"> Hit "Done" and make sure everything is working.

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\n"> Hit the "Start" button to access your messages stored on your Thunderbird profile.

$Step 11 Type in %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ in the search bar.$

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\n"> Type in %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ in the search bar.

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You will then find your e-mails saved in the folder

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Saving E-mails in Outlook

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\n"> Open a folder where you want to store copies of your emails in your file explorer.

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\n"> Launch Outlook, then head to your Inbox.

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This will include attachments as well, but they can only be opened in Outlook as the format of the saved files is proprietary to the e-mail client.

Expert Q&A

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Alternatively, you can use the Outlook method for any email address you have (Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.).

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