Any way of backing up/exporting all emails?

[peterbrinck]

What operating system are you using?

Ubuntu 14.04

What version of N1 are you using?

0.4.33

This isn't a bug, but a question Is there any way of exporting/backing up all emails received?

[bengotow]

Hey! Not currently, but it'd be pretty easy to write this as a plugin. What format would you be looking for?

[peterbrinck]

That sounds great! Thanks!

Actually multiple formats It would be nice to export them as .eml and .mbox files, as those are the most used (I think)

And the ability to export all emails, in the chosen format in a single ZIP file

[mattscilipoti]

+1 I'd like to archive an inactive account, so I can remove these "can no longer authenticate" messages.

[nosywiz]

+1 I would also be interested in this.

[bengotow]

Another user is interested in importing from mbox archives: https://nylas.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/4978

[sherbang]

Related: would like to export individual emails as .eml files. This would be particularly useful for exporting email samples to attach to bug reports.

[jarey]

I would love this feature. "Can't" use N1 as my default mail client, because i need to store all my received mails (in order to be able to search content of mails 1-2-3 years old sometimes). Actually saving mails locally and being able to copy them to another machine withouth them on the mail server like outlook/vault does, would be awesome.

[Richell]

I have old .mbox files I want to import to N1. I would love to see this feature, too.

[clombion]

Hello, was there any work done on this? One of the strong advantage of using a dedicated email client instead of a webapp is the ability to easily export/backup all your emails. I don't mind using a plugin for that, but it would be great if it could be provided publicly. @bengotow mentioned that it would be pretty easy to do.

I'm fine with subscribing to the current product, even if it's not actively developed, as long as it continues working well: right now Nylas fits 90% of my needs. But the unability to export emails is a dealbreaker if the Nylas team won't build the feature.

Thanks!

[bherila]

Since the changes you make in N1 are reflected on the server (right?) theoretically it should be possible to take any client like Thunderbird and export your emails. So, there isn't really any vendor lock-in from the Nylas client perspective in this regard.

[clombion]

I'm not suggesting that there is any vendor lock-in, as it was mentioned that it would be easy to do in Nylas. I'm not trying to leave Nylas, I just want to be able to export my emails so they're included in my computer backups.

That said, I disagree that a sane solution to backing up my emails should require me downloading another complete email client, especially when it is supposedly easy to add the feature in Nylas, which is the software I use and pay for.

[bherila]

So you're going to have 2 copies of your mailbox locally at any given point in time, just for backup purposes? Because you could always back up the local cache, and then use Nylas to read the restored backup.

[clombion]

You seem to assume that it's obvious, sadly this is not for me. I have no idea how Nylas under the hood, where and how emails are stored, if it is able to download the full history of my mailboxes, if I can point Nylas to a external copy of the local cache and have it works. Does the local cache store emails in an interoperable format? How would Nylas reconcile my remote emails and my backed up ones if I restored them? What should I do to avoid conflicts?

These are questions that I guess a member of the Nylas team could answer while building the export tool. Maybe it's documented somewhere and I missed it?

[bherila]

It was not my intention to come off as dismissive, I apologize if that is how you interpreted my response.

Nylas stores its local copy of the mailbox in a SQLite database. The file can be backed up BUT, this database is meant to be a cache; the source of truth is in fact the email box which resides on your email server. So, backing up this database would be akin to backing up something like an outlook OST file. As I understand it, this file was not meant to be backed up. My preferred backup and restore scenario for Nylas Desktop, like Outlook, would be to restore the application configuration and then synchronize a new copy of the local database from my email box on the email server.

Furthermore, I am not even sure that backing up this database would be effective, in the sense that if you were to restore the database, I do not think the email messages would be re-uploaded to your server. Therefore, I suggest that you make the backup on the side of your email server, and allow the client to re-sync them in a restoration scenario.

[clombion]

Thanks it's much clearer. As I'm using Nylas as a client for several different email servers, I hoped that I could use it as a the one-stop solution for backing all my email history in one go. I guess I'll look for alternative solutions.

[bherila]

@clombion after trying many things, my favorite is still to set up a Windows VM and use Outlook which will happily back up any IMAP server to a relatively compact, though proprietary/binary PST file. I do this about once a year to archive everything.

[sebastian-code]

Is there any update on this issue. I have to say, it would be nice to have the functionalities mentioned here implemented in some capacity; being able to export/copy/backup emails as .eml and .mbox files and having even local folders so users can free server space in those cases where they have inbox size restrictions.

Are there any plans to work in this somehow or are there any existing solution people use without an additional email client?

[peterbrinck]

@sebastian-code

Nylas isn't maintained anymore, so I don't think we'll ever get this feature 😉

[sebastian-code]

:man_facepalming: My bad