The developers of this excellent free email backup software have just released version 5 which is more of a bug fixing release than one with many new features. The software’s functionality remained mostly unchanged. It is still possible to backup and archive email accounts both online and software based, to search and filter those emails, migrate emails into other applications and even restore emails. Some new features deserve mentioning.

One of the nicest options that has been added to MailStore Home 5 is the ability to “install” a portable copy of MailStore Home on a computer system. This makes it possible to use the software on USB flash drives and other external devices or discs.

Another rather apparent change is the new user interface which gives the program a modern cleaner look. Here are two screenshots, the first showing the new interface, the second the old one.

The developers have added an auto configuration feature to the email backup and archiving software. The program tries to automatically detect settings based on the email address entered. This works well for known providers such as Google Mail, Yahoo Mail and others. Manual configuration options are available in case the mail server settings are detected incorrectly.

The last new feature is the ability to run multiple archiving tasks at the same time. Before it was only possible to run one archiving task at a time which limited the software quite a bit, especially for users with multiple email accounts.

The addition of a portable version of MailStore Home is without doubt the most promising new feature of the program.

Windows users can download Mailstore Home 5 from the developer website. the program is compatible with all Windows based operating systems from Windows 2000 on. (via)

Thunderbird does not come with options to set different archiving folders for emails, which means that users who want to have more than just a single archive folder per year need to move the emails manually into other folders.

Or, they could use QuickArchiver for the Thunderbird desktop email client which is a brand new add-on that speeds up the archiving noticeably.

The idea behind the extension is simple. When you archive emails, you usually archive emails from the same sender into the same folder. The extension remembers the target folders once you start archiving emails, for instance by pressing a or moving emails to another folder using the context menu or drag and drop.

These folders can then be displayed in the Thunderbird inbox, so that it takes only one click to move a particular email into the previously used folder.

You need to enable the Folder header in the Thunderbird mail view after installing the extension to make use of the feature. This is done with a click on the rightmost icon of the inbox header bar and the selection of Folder from the available options.

Once enabled it will display the last archive folder of that particular email sender. A click on the location moves the selected email automatically into that folder without further confirmation or menus.

The technique used is different from filtering emails into folders. Filtering is an automated process which means that the user cannot read the email subject or body before it is moved. With QuickArchiver, that is possible.

QuickArchiver is a handy extension for Thunderbird users who archive emails from one sender in the same folder. Interested users can download the Thunderbird extension from the official Mozilla Thunderbird extension repository.

The main purpose of email archiving and backup software is to offer fallback copies if the emails and mailboxes in case they get corrupted or deleted on the main storage device. Many desktop email client users do not backup their mail databases regularly, which can end in disaster if the mailboxes get corrupted. The same applies to companies and businesses, but with dire consequences.

As a side effect, archived emails can be moved to another storage device or server, so that they free up disk space on the hard drive that the email client uses to store the email database.

Today we are going to show you how to speed up the email client Thunderbird, by archiving part of the stored emails. The idea is to combine backing up emails regularly, with the benefits of being able to remove emails from the email client that are old and not needed on a regular basis. In case they are needed they can still be accessed in the archiving software.

Before we start, we are going to create a full backup of the Thunderbird profile with MozBackup. Just download and run the backup software, and select to backup the Mozilla Thunderbird profile. Make sure all data is included in the backup (default settings).

backup email client

The program can later be used to restore the full Thunderbird profile in case that is needed.

Windows users have the option between several email archiving programs. For the purpose of this tutorial, we are going to use Mailstore Home. The program makes it almost foolproof to archive emails from various email clients, including Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Google Mail and general IMAP and POP3 mailboxes. The program includes options to search and read emails directly in its interface.

mailstore home

It takes only a few clicks to archive emails in MailStore Home. A click on Archive E-Mail opens the archiving page of the software. Here it is possible to select an email client or protocol from the list to launch a wizard.

The e-mail archiving wizard looks like this for Thunderbird users:

Selection of the Thunderbird profile:

The default profile is the standard profile. Most users will probably only have the default profile, unless they are working on a multi-user computer.

archive mozilla thunderbird

Customization of the archiving options:

Here it is possible to select all email folders for backup, or only specific ones. It is furthermore possible to filter emails by data or status.

archive emails thunderbird

The archiving can take some time, depending on the number of emails stored in the Thunderbird mailboxes. MailStore Home displays the saved profiles in a listing on the archive e-mail page. The program saves all information, including email attachments and headers in its interface.

We suggest to archive all emails on the first run. This is important as it makes it easier to delete emails in the email client afterwards. Delete emails? Yes, to speed up Thunderbird emails need to be removed from the client.

The next step depends on the user and the folder structure. A user only working with the inbox may want to delete all emails older than a specific age, and do the same in the sent, trash and junk folders. This should reduce the size of the mailboxes considerably in the email client.

Finally it is important to compact the folders after deleting the emails in the mail client. Like other email clients, Thunderbird does not physically remove the emails from the mailboxes after they are deleted by the user. This is done by compacting the folders.

The option is available under File > Compact Folders. Before it is selected, a folder in the mail structure needs to be selected.

Hint: It is possible to configure Thunderbird to automatically compact folders by clicking on Tools > Options, switching to the Advanced tab, there to the Network & Disk Space tab, and enabling Compact folders when it will save over x KB.

Thunderbird may start up and feel noticeably faster after archiving and deleting emails in the client. This largely depends on the amount of mails that have been stored in the client prior to the operation. A user with a few hundred mails will probably not notice a speed improvement at all, while a user with tens of thousands of emails likely will.

Do you archive or backup your emails? Let us know in the comments.

Mailstore Home looks very promising. It can backup emails from programs like Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird but also from webmailers (pop and imap) and even mbox files. Mails from programs that are installed on your computer can be backed up with just two clicks of the mouse while pop3 and imap require additional information such as your Gmail account information.

All mails are compressed to save disk space. Once the mails have been added they can easily be burned to CD or DVD using the same interface. The one thing that is lacking is that there is no way of scheduling backups.

Mailstore offers a fast search which is great if you want to quickly find a mail but are not sure where it was send to. All mails from all accounts can be exported in the eml format which is the Outlook Express Electronic Mail format which is supported by most mail applications.

This makes it possible to import all mail into one program in case you want to start using one program from now on. You should note however that you need to add the accounts manually in that program, only the mails are imported.

The best way in my opinion would be to archive all old messages that I would not need anymore and remove them from Thunderbird completely. After thinking about the how-to for a while I found a method that was working perfectly. Thunderbird creates so called mail folders in its profile folder. Inside those mail folders are files without an extension and msf files of the same name.

The idea was to create a new folder, name it accordingly and move it out of the Thunderbird profile folder. I created a folder sent-071101 and moved all sent mails into the folder that were older than one month. This can be done by simply dragging and dropping those mails into the new folder.

After doing that you close Thunderbird and go to the profile folder, normally located in the Application Data of the Documents & Settings folder.

I did create a new folder mail-backups and moved the files sent-071101 and sent-071101.msf into it. The mails that have been moved into that folders are not shown in Thunderbird anymore. I simply proceeded with other mails that I did want to archive and repeated the process again.

This is also an excellent way of backing up your emails regularly. Just copy all those files from the mail folders to another location or burn those to DVD or CD.

Finding the Thunderbird profile folder:

The Thunderbird profile folder is by default located at C:\Documents and Settings\van dread\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\XXXXXX.default\Mail\