Hi,

I learned my lesson about doing backups when my last hard drive crashed, and now back up my documents regularly.

Since most of my e-mail isn't worth saving, I haven't bothered to learn how. But my father has been in the hospital for 9 weeks now and my sister sends updates almost daily, that I save in a folder. But I can't get the folder onto my thumb drive. I've googled, I've tried to right click and copy, and I've tried to drag and drop. I don't even get an error message - it's just that nothing happens.

Can somebody help me? My brain isn't working all that well over this.

Thanks,

aelfgifa

Hi there:

My sympathies about your father. In order to back up the e-mails, here's what you do.

Make sure all the e-mails about your father are in 1 folder with a distinctive title. Now, close Thunderbird.

After Thunderbird is closed down, click on Start --> Search --> All Files and Folders. In the search box under "All or part of the file name" enter the name of the folder your father's mail is in. Under "look in" make sure it says "Local Hard Drives (C: )" Note: the drive letter may be different, but it usually is C. Click on Search. You will likely get two results. Copy both folders onto your flash drive.

Orange Blossom

Orange Blossom,

Thank you.

That worked, my flash drive (thumb drive - whatever the right name is - it shows up as my E drive) now shows two new folders: Dad and Dad.msf. However, Windows won't let me read them - I get a stupid error message saying it doesn't know what program created them.

Then, I open Thunderbird and try to read the folder on my E: drive, I can only read the first message. Am I doing something obviously dumb? I hope that at least if all that mail is saved, I can recover it if this machine goes belly up. (It's about 3.5MB in the folder if that matters and the drive has plenty of room).

Thanks again,

aelfgifa

No, you aren't doing something dumb. Let's see if what I say makes sense. Okay, let's try the explanation this way.

Set stage: Computer bites the dust, and you must get a new machine. You set it up, install the Thunderbird e-mail client, set up your e-mail account, and you really want to read those e-mails you backed up on your thumb drive.

Open the e-mail client, and under local folders create a folder with a distinctive name, something like aardvark maybe. Close the e-mail client. When it is completely closed, do the search for that folder you just created as you did before, but now you are going to do an additional step. In the left panel in the search window, click on "Open Containing Folder". This will open the folder the local mail folder files are stored in. Now open another window that shows the files on your thumb drive and copy the mail folders you have stored there into the folder you found on search. Reopen the Thunderbird e-mail client, and you will see the folder with your father's e-mail under local folders. You will be able to open and read the files.

I hope this makes sense.

Orange Blossom

See if this helps:
How do I export e-mail messages to another mail program or computer?

Thanks again to both of you. I'm going to take my little drive with me and try to read it on another computer. If the data is there, then I'll just store it and stop worrying. I just couldn't figure out why I couldn't read it, even though the files did show up and aren't empty. It will probably make more sense when I am less strressed out.

aelfgifa

You're welcome, aelfgifa.
Good luck.