Going after email backup
It seems easier to go after things, when you don’t know how difficult they may be to implement, isn’t it? Well, I am really not that kind. It is the pure frustration that drives me to churn something like this.
If there is one basic feature after Send, Receive and Compose in an email client, it is the Backup. Don’t give me anything else, just give me a backup feature. It would make my life so much easier.
In today’s world of XML, why can’t we have a simple schema for backup that works irrespective of the client or the service (Thunderbird, Outlook Express or even Gmail team, eyes on you good folks). And for goodness’ sake, instead of giving us pretty logos and icons (they don’t hurt, but), I’d rather see something really useful.
Do you know why I stopped using a desktop client for my email? It’s not because I have broadband or that I dig the web more than my desktop, but because I find my computer unreliable and I may not know when it would suddenly crash, and I’d lose everything. If backup becomes a standard (or a very basic) feature, I could easily import and export important stuff on CDs or my USB drive for safekeeping. And I don’t have to image my drive.
Mozilla, IE team, GMail, get your bottoms on the grind and make that simple import / export backup feature happen, before you do anything else. I don’t care if you use Dave’s OPML technology. Just do it, man. (It hurts my head sometimes when I shout this loud.)
Please people, I beg you, make your software productive and usable. Tell your (human) clients that you care for their data. Help them save what’s precious to them. And if you’re still awake, let me run you through on what would really get me cracking:
I’d love an export/import by:
- Selection of email messages (make that including the threads / conversations)
- By (archive) folders
- If you’re still game, add a tag / category wise import / export feature.
- All email.
Yeah, that would get my tongue swagging.
Now that’s something we really don’t think about. The mind is in something like an auto-mode, you just fire the Outlook and set-up your e-mail accounts in there without botheing to make back-ups. And it’s true getting back-ups made for the e-mail is not a simple 1-2-3 step. Let’s hope they hear your shouts after all and get us some tools.
Sep 2, 05 at 05:00Yes, backup should be a basic feature. Someway or the other, they do need to provide this facility. Maybe, google can ship a backup CD/DVD of your mailbox, and charge for it. And, have a small google search on that, so we that we can find out our mails with ease. I won’t mind spending money on that!
Second option could be exporting mails in whatever format (as you said).
Let’s hope, somebody from Yahoo, Google, Hotmail listens to our pleas. Anyway, it will be a win-win proposal for everybody. We will get the facility, they will get more members.
Sep 2, 05 at 07:58My mail gets backed up on the SAN every night and on another computer twice a week (in the open and raw MBOX format). Use a good mail client and set up a repeating job. Microsoft (speaking of computer crashes when backups are truly needed) never cared about my data. They locked it so I long ago ceased to be their client. Anything that served their purpose, namely my immobility, was the grand goal. Thunderbird will save your mail in a form that is extremely painless to back up.
Sep 3, 05 at 03:26Great idea. I have over 1500 mails in my inbox and I need to archive them some way. Just don’t have the patience to go into each mail and save it as a text file. An auto archive function would be great in a choice of formats.
Sharath
Sep 10, 05 at 12:48Freelance writer from Bangalore, India
For thunderbird just copy the files in this particular folder to backup your email and to restore them just copy them back…
C:\Documents and Settings\{User ID}\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\ob6u7jd0.default\Mail\Local Folders
Hope this solves the problem temporarily… NJoi!
Sep 17, 05 at 17:04Prabhat: Thanks for the tip.
My post wasn’t actually about whether a backup is possible or not, but why there’s no easier and visible way to do it for everyone instead of resorting to hacks. For a software to be really productive, there direly needs a simple export/import system that can work seemlessly across applications.
Data is ours and it should be free, not clamped down or enslaved by a particular application. This is the same discussion happening on many fronts: from office applications all the way towards high end engineering apps.
Sep 18, 05 at 02:40