Archiving IMAP Made Simple – Easy Guide for Securing Emails

Archiving IMAP emails can be time consumingeven if you have some experience. But if you are new to this, it can be even more puzzling. There are, however, methods that can make it seamless. One such method will be discussed here.

This guide aims to help you with IMAP archiving, breaking it down into simple and digestible steps. We’ll use the Mail Backup X tool as our guide, demonstrating how to:

Create a profile.
Connect securely to your IMAP account.
Select essential folders.
Customize your settings like frequency, storage, and more.

By the end of this guide, you’ll know how to effortlessly archive IMAP emails that work exactly how you prefer.

You can start with the steps given below. You can read it just to understand the process better, or even follow along with your system. For that, you need to download the tool from MailBackupX.com website and install. You can use the first 15 days of free trial, if you want to do that.

Start with a Fresh Profile: The Foundation of Your IMAP Archive Strategy

Booting up Mail Backup X for the first time can feel a little overwhelming, but in no time, you will find it easy to navigate around.

The very first step involves creating a new profile, which essentially acts as a container of settings for your entire process. This profile will store all the crucial details about what you want to back up, where you want to save it, and how often the IMAP archive process should occur.

To beginthis profile creation, look around for a box titled “Tasks,”conveniently located at the middle of the tool’s interface (right below that daily overview graph). Inside this pane, look for an action that says, “Setup a New Backup Profile.” Click on it.
You might already have somebackups or archives configured. In that case, navigate to your existing profiles – they are nestled under a tab named “My Backup Profiles”on the left side of the dashboard. Once you’ve located them, find a button labeled “Add New Backup” – it should be readily apparent at the top of the screen, hovering above your current list of profiles (if any exist). Clicking this button will open the new profile wizardfor archiving IMAP emails.

But first, you need to specify where exactly are the emails you want to archive or back up.

Specifying the Emails: Selecting the Right Backup Source

Determine the specific emails you want to archive. Mail Backup X helpfully presents you with a selection of various email client options.

However, since we’re setting up an archival system for an IMAP email account, click on the option that says, “Email Server.”This is to configure a backup for an email account that isn’t directly integratedwithin the software (like Gmail or Yahoo Mail).
Following your selection, you will see a list of popular email providers. If your email provider is this list (Gmail, Outlook, etc.), simply click on the corresponding icon to proceed. However, if your email provider isn’t listed, you can still configure any IMAP Email archiveusing the “IMAP Server” option.

It just sometimes requires a bit more manual configuration on your part. But nothing to worry about, the process is usually quite straightforward.

Logging into the IMAP Email Account

This step will seem familiar – it’s very similar to how you log in to your email account on a regular basis via web-browser like Chrome.

You’ll be prompted to enter your email address and password, the same credentials you use to access your email. Mail Backup X needs this information to establish a secure connection with your email server and retrieve your precious emails.

There’s a chance you might have to fiddle with a few extra settings here and there.It all depends on your specific email provider and how it likes to do things.But usually, the login process should be smooth and without any setbacks.Once you’re logged in,get ready for the next stage:selecting those precious folders you want to archive from your IMAP email account.

Narrowing Down Your Backup

So nowyou’re logged in, and now Mail Backup X is showing you all those email folders. There are probably a lot of folders in there (some default ones and some custom created). Not everything is worth keeping forever. This is where you get to leave behind some of the folders. Decide which directories in your IMAP email account require archiving and which ones you can forget.

You’ll see a whole list of folders and checkboxes next to them. Take a moment here. Junk mail? Probably not worth your time. Old newsletters you never read? Uncheck them to leave out of the backup.

An important note: When you uncheck a folder, everything inside it also gets ignored by the backup. So, if there are a few emails inside a folder that you want to keep, you have to be careful.

A focused backup keeps things running smoothly and helps in managing the space and storage more efficiently.

The Settings Page: Putting the Finishing Touches on Your IMAP Archive Plan

After folder selection, click that “Continue” button, and you’ll find yourself facing the final settings page. This is where you can really fine-tune how your profile works to archive IMAP emails exactly as you want. Let’s break it down:

Name: This one’s simple. You could name it something simple like “Work Emails” or be more descriptive like: “IMAP Archives – Work Emails – 2022″.

Storage: This is where those emails actually end up. You can pick your computer’s hard drive, an external drive, even a cloud storage service if you’ve got one. More options are better here – if something happens to your computer, having a backup somewhere else is going to be very handy.

Encryption: Do not ignore this part if you have sensitive emails that you are archiving.To apply encryption, click on “Secured/Encryption” checkbox. If you have previously completed security setup, you don’t need to do anything again. But if not, you will be asked to set a new passwordand also save the given recovery key.

Activity Level: Specify if you want the profile to archive new IMAP emails as soon as they arrive or if you want to archive at a specific time. You will see these options: automatic, recurring, and manual. Automatic is the one that keeps the archives always up to date. Recurring is to set the frequency (such as, daily, ever week, or every 10 days, etc.). ‘Manual’ mode is self-explanatory.

USB Auto Snapshot: Plug in a USB drive, and Mail Backup X can automatically save stuff to it. All you need to do is enable this feature here by selecting the USB Drive that you want and then enabling the ‘automatic’ option.

The Big Save Button: Once you’ve tweaked everything to your liking, it’s time to bring the profile into action! Click that “Save” button, and the profile wizard will close, and you will see a progress bar.

Post-Profile Creation:

Ok, so your profile is active, but let’s say you change your mind. No problem! Go back to “My Backup Profiles” and tweak with the settings as you see fit. Note that you cannot change an encrypted profile back to unencrypted.
Mail Backup X even lets you peek inside your IMAP email archives without exporting. Very convenient if you just need to grab a single email from long ago.
And you can always export your archived IMAP emails in different formats if you need them outside of the program. You can export them to common formats like PST for Outlook client, MBOX for Thunderbird, EML for other clients, and even native exported folders for Apple Mail, Postbox, and so on.

We hope you found the guide simple and helpful and that you have your IMAP archives properly setup.

InventPure offers both team and personal licensing choices to have the right and affordable subscription of the tool. You can also continue with the tool’s free 15-day trial period to explore more of its features. Let it continue to run and update your IMAP archives, as a means to test and evaluate how it functions in real world, and with your emails specifically.