Backup Outlook 2016 imap emails 1

[tyutghf]

Hi

We are running Outlook 2016 on Windows to manage our IMAP emails. We have years worth of folders and emails.

The email hosts have deleted our account by mistake (!!) and say that they cannot restore them.

Outlook still has my emails available, how do I back these up so that I do not lose them?

I believe that Outlook stores the emails on the local machine (for occasions such as this when the email server cannot be found), can I copy the originals off the hard drive somewhere?

Or can I create a new pst on my computer and drag and drop the folders and emails to the pst?

I daren't try anything at the moment incase the emails get deleted.

Thanks for any help

Oh just thought, if I create a new profile, will the emails stay in my old profile? I could create a new profile with the new email server info and keep the legacy emails in my old profile. Will be a nightmare switching backwards and forwards however.

 

[goombawaho]

I would just EXPORT the emails/calendar/contacts to a PST file using this procedure. Would probably disconnect the network connection so that the EMPTY ONLINE mailbox doesn't sync to your computer and remove all the messages before you can back them up.

Link

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[tyutghf]

So create a new data file pst, create folders within it and drag the emails across?

Will this move the emails are copy them?

How do I disconnect the network, just move the account offline?

Edit: the control button copies instead of simply moving

 

[ChrisHirst]

This is really an Outlook question NOT an email one, so for future reference, forum68 is the place for M$ mail client specific questions.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.

Never mind this jesus character, stars had to die for me to live.

 

[goombawaho]

No - EXPORT keeps everything where it is (in your Outlook OST file), just makes a backup of the email, etc in a new PST file. Then you can verify that you have everything stabilized and then re-import all your emails into your IMAP account. It will then sync to the server, which is empty now from what you said.

You might want to set up one computer (if you have one) to use POP3 to download all messages from the server as a backup. Just choose LEAVE MESSAGES ON SERVER or else it will pull the messages off the server. You could leave the PC on 24/7 and checking your account every 20 minutes to keep everything up-to-date.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[tyutghf]

Thanks goombawaho, I backed everything up to a pst, created a new profile with the new account info, imported the pst, copied the emails from the pst to imap and synced (is that the correct word?).

It's all good now, thanks for the help.

 

[goombawaho]

Yes, synced is what happens when IMAP clients connect with the server. Now you need to find out what happened to your online mailbox/messages. You don't want this happening again. Maybe you need to switch mail providers to someone that can give better reliability OR guarantee some type of email backup/restore capability.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.