Backup Hotmail - Need Instructions

[songkrai]

From what I read here - I have Windows Live Hotmal - web based.

I do not use Outlook.

I would like to save all my Hotmail only emails and Hotmail email folders to some sort of CD disk or Flash drive.

Once I get this done, I wish to clean up/delete all emails on Hotmail. But still have them on my PC and a CD disk or Flash drive.

Is this possible?

 

[strollin]

I don't believe it is possible to do what you want using the web-based mail but you could install the Windows Live Mail Client to your machine and it will allow you to export and import your messages to and from your Hotmail account.

 

[osholt]

The easiest way would be to download them all to an email client (Outlook, Live Mail, Thunderbird etc.)

From here you can then easily backup all your emails using a tutorial such as Backup Thunderbird emails & profile (or restore from backup) (I would recommend Thunderbird for this particular job because, form my own experience it's by far the easiest client to backup manually and restore.

I hope this is helpful.

To back them up from hotmail.com directly is near impossible without saving every single webpage to a flash drive manually.

I hope this is useful.

Oli

 

[drinkwa2]

Backing up email & then downloading to Outlook

Oli: Am quite new to email migration issues & saw your response to this Backup Hotmail issue. I have been away in Africa for 4 months & was ONLY using hotmail for my email. I just got Office 2010 & would like to move my mail from Hotmail to Outlook. Would like to back up my email first before doing anything to it (how?)....then would like to move it to Outlook (how?).

I tried to download Outlook Connector....it says it is installed (on my Control Panel), but I can't find it anywhere on my computer?? ....& not sure how to use?

Mary

 

[osholt]

Oli: Am quite new to email migration issues & saw your response to this Backup Hotmail issue. I have been away in Africa for 4 months & was ONLY using hotmail for my email. I just got Office 2010 & would like to move my mail from Hotmail to Outlook. Would like to back up my email first before doing anything to it (how?)....then would like to move it to Outlook (how?).

I tried to download Outlook Connector....it says it is installed (on my Control Panel), but I can't find it anywhere on my computer?? ....& not sure how to use?

Mary

There is little reason to backup your hotmail email on the server (Microsoft's servers are full of redundancy and pretty reliable).

Just so you are aware, hotmail can be accessed using webmail (hotmail.com) and through an email client (in this case Outlook).

When setting up a Hotmail account in Outlook you are NOT bypassing the server on which Microsoft stores your email.

You are simply taking copies of your email off the server and reading them in a nicer interface. (It's a little bit more complicated than that but it's not important about going into detail here)

To setup Hotmail in Outlook follow the guide at How to Configure Hotmail POP3 Access in Outlook (if it's first time setup skip the first step).

In essence what you are doing by accessing your email in an email client is adding an extra layer of redundancy (or in layman's terms, backup) to email.

In a hypothetical situation where Microsofts's email servers crashed and lost all your email and you only accessed it by webmail, you would have lost ALL your email.

However if you were to access via an email client, the messages you had downloaded before the server crashed would still be intact on your PC.

Outlook connector is not necessary.

In short: you do not need to backup your hotmail email before you start (Microsoft's got it covered).

Having your email in Outlook is liking regularly backing up your email

You can setup your email in Outlook using How to Configure Hotmail POP3 Access in Outlook

I hope you find this useful and that it isn't too confusing for you to read. If you need any more explanation, clarification or help just ask.

Oli

PS This is not difficult as far as email goes

 

[drinkwa2]

moving 'old email folders' from hotmail to outlook

Thanks, Oli!! Have got things set up so that from now on, everything that comes into hotmail also comes into Outook.

One other issue is how to get all my emails that are currently in all the folders that i had set up in Hotmail moved over to Outlook. I think I remembered at some point having to do something like save them as .ppm files?? or something else and then 'importing' them to new folders in Outlook?? Not sure.

Mary

 

[osholt]

Moving emails into folders in Outlook is as easy as drag and drop (if you wan t to select lots use Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click to select lots [click first and last email wanted to move]).

You can create folders really easily toojust by right clicking and selecting the appropriate new folder button.

Oli