Software Engineer

curiouswebster

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For completeness, the other simple approaches...<br />
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Use Git to store all messages. Downside is searching git for strings can be slow + cumbersome + grep statements must be stacked to approximate natural language searches.
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For completeness, the other simple approaches...

Use Git to store all messages. Downside is searching git for strings can be slow + cumbersome + grep statements must be stacked to approximate natural language searches.

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How do I back up emails from ThunderBird?<br><br>What file format will it be?<br><br>Is this a standard format I can use with other email clients?
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How do I back up emails from ThunderBird?
What file format will it be?
Is this a standard format I can use with other email clients?

ThunderBird: Backing up Emails

An email client, email reader or more formally mail user agent (MUA) is a computer program in the category of groupware environments used to access and manage a user's email. A web application that provides message management, composition, and reception functions may internally act as an email client; as a whole, it is commonly referred to as webmail. Likewise, email client may be referred to a piece of computer hardware or software whose primary or most visible role is to work as an email client. Email clients can also have other systems, like calendars, notes and contact managers.

Email Clients

Thunderbird is an email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat (XMPP, IRC, Twitter) client that supports POP and IMAP and LDAP address completion. The vanilla version is not a personal information manager, although the Mozilla Lightning extension adds PIM functionality. Thunderbird can manage multiple email, newsgroup, and news feed accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features such as quick search, saved search folders, advanced message filtering, message grouping, and labels help manage and find messages. Thunderbird incorporates a Bayesian spam filter, a whitelist based on the included address book, and can also understand classifications by server-based filters such as SpamAssassin. Extensions allow the addition of features.

Thunderbird

Within Internet message handling services (MHS), a message transfer agent or mail transfer agent (MTA) or mail relay is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using a client–server application architecture. A MTA implements both the client (sending) and server (receiving) portions of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). The terms mail server, mail exchanger, and MX host may also refer to a computer performing the MTA function. The Domain Name System (DNS) associates a mail server to a domain with mail exchanger (MX) resource records containing the domain name of a host providing MTA services.

Email Servers

Interactions between email servers and clients are governed by email protocols. The three most common email protocols are POP, IMAP and MAPI. Most email software operates under one of these (and many products support more than one).  The correct protocol must be selected, and correctly configured, if you want your email account to work.

Email Protocols

An email client, email reader or more formally mail user agent (MUA) is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email. A web application that provides message management, composition, and reception functions is sometimes also considered an email client, but more commonly referred to as webmail.