How to Back Up or Export Your Email

There are many reasons you may wish to export or back up your email. For example, if you have switched to a new email address it may be necessary to export your emails so they are not lost in the transition. The following sections list several ways to do this. Any one of these ways will work on its own.

Export with SOGo Mail

If you are using a Gandi email account, you can use the export feature of our SOGo interface to export all existing email in your account. You do this by following these steps.

  1. Log into your SOGo account.

  2. Go to your inbox.

  3. Click on the profile icon next to any email.

  4. Click on the square icon in the toolbar that appears at the top of your inbox. When you hover over this icon it will say “Select all.”

  5. Click on the three dots icon in the same toolbar and select “Save as….”

  6. Choose to save the file. The selected emails will be downloaded as a single zip file. If you have a large amount of email this may take several minutes.

Note

It is not possible to upload emails through SOGo, so to restore downloaded emails you will need to use an email client.

Set Up Your Account with POP

POP email differs from IMAP in that it downloads the email from the mail server to the local computer, then deletes the email from the mail server. How you do this will be different depending on the mail client you use. You can find instructions by searching for “POP” and your mail client. For example, you can find instructions for setting up POP with Thunderbird here.

Warning

POP deletes emails from the server so that the email is only stored on your local computer. This means that if something happens to your local copies the emails will be lost. Take care to back up any important information.

Use Your Email Client

Email clients often have built in abilities for exporting and importing email. Since there are many email clients, and many options for importing and exporting email, Gandi cannot provide a comprehensive list of instructions, but you may find some of the following links helpful:

Use a Third Party Service

In addition to the sources listed above, there are additional paid and free services which can help you with backing up and restoring your email. If you find that your needs are not met using the options above, it may be worth performing a search for a service or application more suited for your unique needs.