Overview
The solution I have is to use gmail in IMAP mode and then in Outlook Express transfer the emails appearing in IMAP folders into the Outlook Express local Inbox.
Once the emails are in the local Inbox they can be backed up using Express Archiver.
I like gmail to not have the backedup emails so the following steps include how to remove from gmail after you have the local backup up copy already downloaded. For me it helps to know what I have backed up and what I haven't.
Detail
- Set up IMAP for the gmail account
- Use gmail's labelling to organise email
- In gmail, choose a label that has the email for downloading for local backup, e.g. 'newsletters'
- Select all emails with this label e.g. 'newsletters' and add an additional label to these 'tobearchived'
- In outlook express (OE) set up gmail as an imap account
- In OE refresh the IMAP list, if necessary (via right-click pop up menu on IMAP top folder) to show the all gmail IMAP boxes, one for each gmail label
- In OE find the 'newsletters' IMAP mailbox
- Select all of the emails and drag into the local OE Inbox (not the IMAP one). The emails will be moved out of the IMAP mail box into the local Inbox
- Archive the emails from the OE local inbox: either drag them out of this inbox into a Windows folder or close OE and use Express Archiver.
- After Archiving/backing up emails, delete the original copies on the local OE Inbox.
- The emails downloaded via OE will still be present in gmail but with their IMAP tag removed 'newsletters' in the example because OE emptied the box when they were moved locally. However, the tobearchived label is still present so you can use this to delete off these emails from gmail that are now backed up locally, so that you dont have 2 different sets of copies.
Of course, gmail is a pretty good webmail client and as they say why would you want to delete anything, and just keep all email there. For me I like to associate emails with archives of projects that I do: audio, video, software so it's all in one place. So I still like to trust myself in managing my data rather than online storage, for now.