Exporting Thunderbird Emails as EML and HTML Files

Over the years I have used a number of different email accounts and as a result, my Thunderbird profiles are disorganized and messy. Because Thunderbird doesn’t include export capability, the only way I knew to backup my Thunderbird emails was to browse to Users/me/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird on my computer’s ‘C’ drive and copy the ‘Profiles’ folder.

Well, I decided I needed to look for a way to export individual emails so that I could finally archive those years old emails that I rarely look at but still want to keep. If I merely backup the mbox files before deleting those folders from my profile I would run into a problem. This problem was that I wouldn’t be able to view any emails in the mbox file without first reattaching the file to my Thunderbird profile. I needed something else.

What I found was a neat little Thunderbird extension called ImportExportTools. This free extension allows you to export Thunderbird emails in a variety of formats including EML, HTML, PDF, plain text, and spreadsheet.

Using this Thunderbird add-on I exported all my emails as EML files. This format allows me to import them en masse back into Thunderbird should I ever need to. Saving in this format will also save the attachments.

I also exported all my emails as HTML files. I could also have saved them as PDF files but I believe HTML files are generally smaller than PDF files. Saving them as HTML will not save the attachments so be sure you either don’t need them, don’t have any, or have saved your emails as EML files as well. There are two reasons I like saving my emails as HTML files. First of all, they’re quick and easy to open – any internet browser can do it. Secondly, and most importantly, the text within the HTML files is searchable which is a big help when I’m searching my entire life for a specific text string.

I love this add-on and think it should be standard for any Thunderbird user. It is very easy to use. It is also very quick because it allows you to export all the emails within entire folders at once.