What is MailStore Home
MailStore Home is a freeware that creates an archive of all your mail on your computer from different programs, mailboxes and webmail services. The application is lightweight and supports any POP3 and IMAP mailbox along with popular desktop email clients.
Creating backup
Step 1: Download and install MailStore on your computer where you want to create your centralized backup. You can even use portable version of the program. Step 2: Once you fire up MailStore after its successful installation, select Archive Email from the home screen. Step 3: You now need specify the service you wish to create the archive for. I have used Gmail as an example for the tutorial however you can select any service depending on your need. As you see in the screenshot below, it supports a number of email clients. Note: If you wish to create archive from services like like Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, you must configure them by POP or IMAP mailbox settings. A quick Google search would reveal those settings. Lets see how to backup Gmail using MailStore. Step 4: Provide your Gmail login credentials to let MailStore access your account. Step 5: You now need to filter your backup by selecting the specific folders to backup. Step 6: Double check every thing and once you are sure, hit the Finish button. The backup will run creating a local archive of emails that were in your inbox. The process will take time depending upon the size of your backup.
Restoring an Email Backup Using MailStore
Step 1: If you wish to restore your backup, go to MailStore Home start page and this time click on Export E-mail. Step 2: Select the service to which you want to restore your backup. I have chosen E-mail address via SMTP for this tutorial. Step 3: Select the folders you wish to export via SMTP connection. Step 4: You must now configure your mailbox SMTP connection. For Gmail the SMTP-SSL Host is smtp.gmail.com . Step 5: Just when you press the finish button the restoration process will start . The process will take time depending upon the size of the archive. When the restoration process is finished open your mailbox to which you just restored your backup. You will find all the mails in your inbox sent to you by yourself.
Make Small Backups
To make your backup size small, sort your emails in folders online according to priority and at the time of archiving make sure you select only the specific folder as mentioned in the step 5.
My Verdict
In recent past, a Gmail bug affected almost 150,000 accounts deleting all their emails from their mailbox. They managed to restore the accounts within 24 hours but the situation confirmed that accidents tend to happen and you cannot be sure that your email online is always safe. Hence a tool like MailStore ensures that you do not lose important data if your email account were to disappear suddenly.
