Installation of the Add-On Import-Export Tools:

• Google Search “mozilla thunderbird addons import-export tools”
• Click the First Hit for https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

 

 

• On the Add-ons page, click the yellow Download Now button and save the ImportExportTools.xpi file to a new or empty existing folder on your hard disk.  Remember the path where the file was downloaded. because you will need to find it in the next steps.

 

• Open Thunderbird email account.  Make sure you Menu is Enable (see below).
• On the Thunderbird Menu select Tools, and from the Drop Down List select Add-ons.

 

• Find and click on the little Gear at to top right corner of the Add-ons Extensions Manager next to the search add-ons box.
• In the drop down list select “Install Add-ons from File.”

Find and Select and Open the Import-Export-Tools.xpi file that you just downloaded to a folder on your hard disk. Select it and click the Open Button.

 

• Select the Install Now button in the bottom right corner of the Software Installation action box.

• And after the Addon is installed, click the Restart Now button to restart Thunderbird and activate the addon for this email account.

• When Thunderbird restarts, close the Add-on Manager Tab.
• You will find Import Export Tools on the Tools Menu of Thunderbird.  Select tools, then point  to Import Export Tools from the Tools drop down list.  You will see all the options for importing and exporting messages, etc.

USING IMPORT EXPORT TOOLS TO BACKUP MESSAGES TO YOUR HARD DRIVE.  HERE IS MY RECOMMENDED BACKUP METHOD:

• Select the folder you wish to backup such as the INBOX.
• On the Menu, select TOOLS, point to IMPORT EXPORT TOOLS, point to EXPORT ALL MESSAGES IN THE FOLDER, and select EML FORMAT.
• Navigate to your downloads folder, and create a subfolder with the name of your email account, and create a subfolder called INBOX on your hard drive.  Select that subfolder to export all the messages in your Thunderbird INBOX to that new subfolder.
• When your email messages are somehow corrupted or deleted from your email account inbox, or if you wish to create a new email account (such as an IMAP account) for which you want to IMPORT the messages to the new INBOX of the IMAP account, and have them Synchronized / Uploaded to the IMAP server Inbox, well you then have the ability to IMPORT all the Messages from your hard disk sub-folder located in your customer downloads path at / INBOX / MESSAGES folder that was created when you exported all of your EML files to a backup.
• The EML files will be backed-up into a MESSAGES sub-folder under the INBOX backup folder that you created, and the folder path to those files will look something like the following image.  The files with the blue Tbird Icon are all *.EML files. All email attachments are preserved.

 

NOTE, you can do a separate backup of all the email messages in each email folder of your email account, such as SENT ITEMS, and DRAFTS, and IMPORTANT folder, etc.  Just make a separate backup folder for each.  You can import them folder-by-folder if you ever need to reconstruct your Email Account.