Mailstore Home 7.1: Email backup software update available

Mailstore Home is my go-to software when it comes to backing up email and migrating email between programs and computer systems. I'm using it to speed up Thunderbird by backing up and removing old emails from the application to lighten its load, and to backup Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo Emails.

The developers of Mailstore have just released version 7.1 of the program introducing official support for Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system. This is the only new feature addition to the application. Four additional changes have been made to the program, of which two are bug fixes for issues that some users may have encountered while using the application.

• The authentication mechanism Digest MD5 is no longer usable in combination with the IMAP protocol
• Changed E-mail messages that (because of an error) still exist in the search index, but not in the database, are longer contained in search results
• Fixed Debug log files have an incorrect name under certain circumstances
• Fixed Outlook MSG files whose Internet Headers property does not end with a line break can't be read by MailStore

Exiting users need to download the latest Mailstore Home version from the official website to update the program version to 7.1 by running the installer again on the system. As some have pointed out, Mailstore Home has a built-in updater so that the application can be updated fromwithin the program. Mailstore Home will automatically be updated to the latest version this way.

The interface of the application has not changed at all. New users can backup email with a click on the archive e-mail option in the main program window. Mailstore Home displays a number of desktop email clients automatically here which you can pick if you are using a program for that. You can alternatively load email files, e.g. Mbox files, into the program, or enter an email address to archive mails from a web mail account.

A click on the advanced button here displays options to load a wizard for services such as Gmail or Microsoft Exchange, or IMAP and Pop3 mailboxes.

What I personally like about the program is that it not only provides the means to backup email, but also options to search all backed up emails, including attachments and header information, right from within the interface. That's useful if you are working with multiple web based email providers among other things.

Which program do you use to backup your emails?