How Do I Move Email to an External Hard Drive?

⏱️ Move email to an external hard drive
In most email programs you can save individual messages as “.eml” files, which you can save wherever you like, including external hard drives. As an alternative, you can use an email program that allows for local folder storage, and move messages there. While not on your external hard drive, this approach allows you to access the messages from within the email program for easy access.

Chapters
0:00 Move Email to an External Drive
0:40 OneDrive is suddenly full
1:40 Downloading messages one by one
5:00 Do it with Thunderbird
6:00 Local Folders
8:00 External drive

More Ask Leo!

[askleonotenboom]

Looking for solutions when you run out of space online.

[douglasharrislane]

So nice to hear a voice and not MUSIC to explain the procedure. Thank you

[BuddyLuv]

Excellent and thorough, very well explanation and delivered at a pace I can follow. Many thanks.

[RAYT]

very concise information... thank you! I have been using Windows since 95 and email since 1985 and do not / did not use or learn keyboard commands. Despite my age and experience, I continue to get puzzled and amazed by the easiest of problems and solutions. I was thinking the problem with my disappearing text was maybe a synch problem between my cordless mouse/keyboard and my computer. I just switched back to corded and will see if that makes a difference, and will always avoid hitting that damn control key. Control Z / Control S is have US in control! Thanks, Leo!

[helihubby]

Excellent Leo. thanks so much from the Scottish Borders😉

[graytonw]

I have a similar procedure, but in my case I use the Outlook client. I have my two email accounts set up, then another two "archive" local data files attached. Periodically I drag the emails I want to save into my archive files (all laid out with folders and sub-folders), which clears out my email accounts. Then periodically I copy the data files over to my two laptops, which have Outlook configured identical to my desktop. It's a bit of a pain, but it ensures the emails are backed up.

[markanderson]

Great! Now can you take the email that is stored on your local drive and copy them to another ( whether internal or external) drive? another words like a backup copy. I mean the original will remain in place but you are effectively making a copy to another location.

[TheMisterlir]

Great video! though i have a specific question about the backed up email.
How can i keep the date of the original message on the file details in the computer instead of the current date that i was backing up?

[Jules_Pew]

You can export thunderbird into your external hard drive easily enough. I've done it a number of times to synch my devices.

[tommak]

I have a SSD is my primary harddisk, outlook program is in this SSD; and a HDD as my other internal harddisk if I install the thunderbird in the HDD, is the folder consider as local folder even it is not in the primary SSD ? Please advise
Thanks

[eddiemurillo]

Hello Leo thanks for showing us where to go to save email externall but how about gmail??? MXM and HNY.

[hassanmaje]

Just a question: After transferring the emails to local folders in email clients such as Thunderbird, how do you backup those folders?

[MikeAnn]

Hi Leo. I just noticed that the (longer) comment I posted hours ago is now gone. YouTube continues to baffle me in terms of what gets blocked, and why, and on which channels. I'll repost just part of it:
I've been curious to try Thunderbird for years, and it might just be what I need to solve a storage problem, not with Outlook but with Xfinity email. I'm nearly full, over and over again, and have to keep deleting emails by the hundreds. My problem has been trying to figure out what to do with those I want to keep, especially the _large_ ones. You may have just answered that.
My question is, would I be able to set Thunderbird to leave emails on the server by default and download only those that I choose, when I choose, to archive them on my computer?
Thumbs up for another useful video. 👍

[jaybbri]

how about you are running out of storage in your Gmail, how can this be managed ?

[AR-vfvg]

PLEASE : Ok srrategy ? :

On C: Thunderbird
(or Betterbird)

and have the app 'Real-FreeFileSync'

"constantly" incremental-sync
the entier Thunderbird
(or witch best folders of it ??)
.. from C:

onto the
second internal disk
(SSD 2TB, that I dedicated to be 'personal data'*) ?

(I only have syste, - and programfiles on C,
even the Win11's default user-folders ("Documents", ...) :
I have those (not synced but) "dis"-located to "my data-disc"
(my second internal SSD).

*(my Data-SSD has it's own external global bkup strategy.)

It's indeed only when I wanted to free up (but not shut down) an old free cloud maileaccount of mine, that I realized that these such local folders would have to join my data-ssd for my logic to remain consistant, but realized it does not look simple how to go about it have those very old mails truly accessible.
And now that You say these folders should remain in constant reach of running Thunderbird... hence my above "solution" question :-)

Thank you in advance !

[spider]

Hard to understand why people use outlook and not Gmail

[jrmurphypoet]

I tried what you said AND IT DOES NOT WORK - MICROSOFT WILL NOT ALLOW IT.