BACK UP YOUR EMAILS FOR PEACE OF MIND
Backing up your inbox to your PC or external hard drive gives you access to your messages no matter what happens – even if hackers attack your account. Wayne Williams recommends the best free back-up options
BACK UP AUTOMATICALLY Thunderbird
In Thunderbird ( www.mozilla.org/ en-gb/thunderbird), an email client from Firefox’s creator Mozilla, the Mail Account Setup Wizard simplifies the process of adding an email account so that you only need to enter your name, email address and password. It works with all the main webmail and email services, and has a tab-based interface that makes it easy to switch between messages.
When setting up you can choose between two email protocols: POP and IMAP (see screenshot below). With POP, messages are downloaded to your PC (250 at a time) and then, depending on your settings, either deleted from the source (Gmail or Outlook.com, for example), archived, or left where they are.
With IMAP, messages are synchronised. Delete an email in Thunderbird and it will vanish from the web and vice versa.
em Client
em Client ( www.emclient.com) is a more advanced alternative to Thunderbird, containing a calendar, a to-do list and tools for managing your contacts. Like Thunderbird it works with POP and IMAP, downloads your messages as they arrive, and lets you save them by dragging them to your desktop or a specific folder.
It automatically sets up Gmail, Outlook.com and Apple icloud accounts, and even imports email from other clients you may have used in the past. It’s free for home users, with no limitations, though you’ll need to register to get a licence. There’s a 30-day free trial of the Pro edition, but the free version should be enough for your needs.
IFTTT
If This Then That ( https://ifttt.com) is a useful service that lets you link popular programs and devices so an action in one triggers an associated action in another.
A simple example is ‘if I get an email from a specific sender, then forward it to a different email account’. Sign up for an account, choose the options you need, then customise them. You can use it to do all sorts of tasks, such as automatically downloading attachments to Google Drive, Onedrive, or Dropbox (see screenshot below left).
BACK UP MANUALLY Mailstore Home
Mailstore Home ( www.snipca.com/ 27312) backs up your emails, and it works with all email providers. To use it, select the service (s) to back up, then enter your email account details. Your messages are saved in a central location on your hard drive, from where you can search for and read them. You can also easily restore them back to your email account.
You can password-protect your archives, and the software fully encrypts all databases to make it impossible for anyone other than you to view the