How to Save Emails to Computer

Last Updated: August 25, 2018 Tested

If you’ve ever felt the need to backup all your e-mails so you have your own personal copy, you’ve come to the right place to know how to do it. If you’re saving work e-mails though, it is recommended to ask your IT department about doing this, so you can avoid legal consequences if it’s prohibited.

Method 1

Method 1 of 2:

Saving Gmail Messages

1
Head to "Settings." On your Gmail account, click on the gear icon at the top right
2
Go to "Forwarding and POP/IMAP."

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3
Enable POP for all mail. Then set “Keep Gmail’s copy in the inbox” on the drop-down menu in the next option.
4
Download and install Thunderbird. It’s a free e-mail program that will help you back up your mail for free.
5
Set up Thunderbird. When you first run Thunderbird, it will ask you to set things up. When you get to the login screen, where you type your e-mail address and password, click “Manual setup.”
6
Change IMAP to POP3. This is located beside “Incoming.”
7
Type in “pop.gmail.com” (without the quotes) on the “Incoming” text field.
8
Change the "Port" field to 995.
9
Hit "Done" and make sure everything is working.
10
Hit the "Start" button to access your messages stored on your Thunderbird profile.
11
Type in %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ in the search bar.
12
Click the folder with “Default” that appears, and open it in a window.
- You will then find your e-mails saved in the folder

Method 2

Method 2 of 2:

Saving E-mails in Outlook

1
Open a folder where you want to store copies of your emails in your file explorer.
2
Launch Outlook, then head to your Inbox.
3
Select all the messages you want to save, and simply drag and drop them into the folder.
- This will include attachments as well, but they can only be opened in Outlook as the format of the saved files is proprietary to the e-mail client.