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Can I download all the emails and have them saved in raw format (headers and such) using some email client such as Thunderbird, Outlook, etc?

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As mentioned in the comments, most of the popular email clients already do that.

Although I wouldn't recommend Outlook, as it does deform the headers a bit – Thunderbird works better in that regard. (You can even drag & drop a message from Thunderbird to your desktop, and have it stored as a regular file.)

On Linux you could also use Claws, mutt, OfflineIMAP, or any of the dozens of IMAP clients.

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  • Can I drag them all and have them saved as plaintext? Apr 9, 2016 at 11:33
  • Probably? Never tried. The internal storage format that Thunderbird uses is also plaintext (Maildir in latest version, mbox in earlier ones). Apr 9, 2016 at 11:34
  • Okay. I only worked with exporting into those backup formats so far. Apr 9, 2016 at 11:35
  • Well, drag & drop doesn't work, but "Save as" and choosing the destination will save it in .eml, which is plaintext (obviously, since Thunderbird stores them in plaintext) Apr 9, 2016 at 11:48
  • There's nothing "obvious" in the latter part. For all you know, the mail client could store the messages in a database (e.g. Outlook uses .pst, Geary uses sqlite) and extract the plaintext on demand. I only mentioned the plaintext thing because you might have wanted to access the stored mails directly, from within Thunderbird's profile folder. Apr 9, 2016 at 11:51

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