
If there are additional options, read them carefully to make sure you understand what you are agreeing to.Ĭlick Install on the last page of the Wizard to install Thunderbird.

The first step is to download and install Thunderbird. In this example, I’ll use Thunderbird as my desktop email program, but any desktop program supporting IMAP can back up your email, including Microsoft Office Outlook and others.

The good news is that IMAP is common almost all email services support it. For this technique to work, the account must support a protocol called IMAP.

The technique I’ll use applies to almost all online accounts, including Gmail, Yahoo!, and others. Our example: and Hotmailįor this article, I’m going to use a Hotmail account: I’ll continue to access that account as I usually do, using the website, but we’ll back it up to my PC using Thunderbird. You’ll also need to periodically manually export and download your contacts to back them up as well. Leave Thunderbird running (or run it periodically) to make sure your backups are up to date. Configure Thunderbird to access and download your email using your email service’s IMAP settings to back up.
