How to Backup Mozilla Thunderbird Emails to Hard Drive?

Creating a backup of any data always proves to be useful for users. By saving backup, you can protect your data from unnecessary corruption and disasters. Here we are talking about creating backup of Thunderbird emails. If your system got some physical damage, then there are chances that you won't be able to access Thunderbird data. If you have created a backup of your important emails, you will be able to retrieve them back.

Methods to take Thunderbird emails backup

There are different methods to backup Mozilla Thunderbird emails to hard drive. Thunderbird does not provide any in-built feature for backup. Hence, get some of the methods to backup Thunderbird emails -

1. Export Thunderbird emails to various formats - By adding a specific add-on in Thunderbird email client, you can save emails of Thunderbird.
2. Backup Thunderbird profile - You need to locate the user's profile folder, copy the content and paste them to a convenient location.

Method 1. Export Thunderbird emails to various formats

Since Thunderbird doesn't have any in-built feature to export emails. Therefore, you need to add ImportExportTools add-in to make it capable to export Thunderbird emails to multiple file formats like EML, HTML, PDF, Plain Text, etc.

Follow the steps to export emails via Thunderbird using ImportExportTool Add-in –

1. Launch Mozilla Thunderbird on your system.
2. Click on ‘Display the Thunderbird menu’ form the top-right corner of the interface of the tool.
   
   
3. Select Add-ons and it will open a new dialog box.
   
   
4. Click Get Add-ons button under Add-ons manager window.
   
   
5. Select ImportExportTools under Featured Add-ons
   
   
6. Click Add to Thunderbird button.
   
   
7. Click Install Now button.
   
   
8. Once the add-on is successfully installed. Click Restart Now button to finish the process.
   
   
9. Right-click Inbox or the folder you want to export. Select ImportExportTools, choose Export all messages and select EML format.
   
   
   Note: Select the desired format in which you want to export Thunderbird emails. You will get various options with this method in which you can export emails of Thunderbird emails.
10. Select a destination path to save the backup of files and click select folder button.
    
    

Your backup will be saved to the destination directory.

Method 2. Backup Thunderbird profile

You can backup the entire Thunderbird profile, mailbox data and all the information associated with your account such as emails, email settings, etc.

When you backup Thunderbird profile, you can simply copy the contents of user's profile folder and paste it to the desired location of your choice.

1. Launch Thunderbird
2. Click on ‘Display the Thunderbird menu’
   
   
3. Go to Help > Troubleshooting information. This will open a new window.
   
   
4. Click on Open folder button under Application Basics section.
   
   
5. After clicking Open folder button, it will launch user's profile directory
   
   
6. Come outside to this folder and copy the user's profile folder and paste it to convenient location.
   
   

Third-party tool to backup Mozilla Thunderbird emails

After discussing manual solutions to backup Thunderbird emails. Now, get one of the effective solutions to backup the files by exporting Thunderbird emails to a file format that is supported by other email clients like MS Outlook, Windows Live Mail, etc. For this, just export Thunderbird emails to desired file format through third-party tools, In this regard, Softaken has launched a reliable tool to export Thunderbird files to PST and EML formats.

Download Free MBOX to PST Converter Now

Softaken for MBOX to Outlook Converter is one of the widely used tools to export MBOX files to PST file format. The tool comfortably export multiple MBOX files at a time. You can get free trial with this application and export first 10 items per folder of MBOX. The utility provides the facility to users to export MBOX files to other formats like EML, MSG, and EMLX.