Backup Thunderbird's Email
Mozilla's Thunderbird is an excellent all-round email client, and one which offers significant advantages in security and reliability over Microsoft's Outlook. It is a great choice for single users and businesses alike. As with any other email client, it is important that you know how to protect your data. Email can be the lifeblood of a business as well as enormously important to an individual. As such, it should be backed up regularly. This is not a very intuitive process in Thunderbird but it does not have to be difficult.
The first step to protecting you emails, whether you are using Thunderbird or any other client, is to make sure that they are left on the server after being downloaded. This may consumer some space, but it will ensure that the messages exist on your local computer and the server, which is likely to be the most reliable place to have them.
In the event of a server failure and/or the failure or your local system, you are going to want a local backup of your email. The best way to do this is to backup your email's folder. Here are the steps:
Tools (or Edit, depending on your version) > Account Settings > Server Settings > Local Directory
In Windows the directory will look like: C:\Documents and Settings\*username*\ Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxx.default\Mail\*accountname*
In Ubuntu it will look something like this location: /home/*username*/.mozilla-thunderbird/xxxxxx.default/Mail/Local Folders
Inside this folder the is raw data for your emails. All you have to do to back up the emails is to save this folder in a secure location. Restoring the emails is a matter of dropping the saved folder into a chosen profile.
Before backing up it is a good idea to compact the email. To so this:
Select the account > File > Compact Folders