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I use Thunderbird for my mail on a lot of IMAP servers.

Currently, I have set my offline settings to include every folder and go to offline mode every few days. That should mean I always have all mails locally on my PC, right?

I would like to have a better way to create a backup though (one that isn't affected by syncs/deletions in the future) that includes all my mail, junk and trash folders included.

I don't really care much about the format of the backup.  It would be great if there was a way that lets me export everything in some kind of database format (SQL, CSV, JSON, etc.).

Note that some of the accounts don't exist on any server anymore, but mails are still saved within Thunderbird. I'd want a backup to include those as well, so some external IMAP saver tool wouldn't suffice.

Attachments should also be saved, if able to retrieve (as I doubt Thunderbird saves those locally). Bonus points for being able to extract and locally save external images from mails.

Edit: I'm not really seeking for product recommendations. I want to do this within Thunderbird, and given my above requirements I'm sure I'll have to do it within Thunderbird. Simply put:

How can I export all my mails from all accounts out of Thunderbird?

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    Anything that's saved in Thunderbird is in your profile. The ImapMail folder has messages from IMAP accounts. The Mail folder has messages you've moved to local folders. You could just make copies of those folders, but there are various related settings and files, so it isn't always clean to just substitute folders in your profile to access old messages. It's easier to make a copy of the entire profile, then switch to that profile to access the archived stuff. (cont'd)
    – fixer1234
    Nov 17, 2019 at 21:31
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    See kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird. I'm sure there are utilities available to export the mailboxes, including message content and metadata, that can be found with a Google search; there might even be Thunderbird add-ons. Another option: create a new profile. From there, use Import from the Tools menu to import the mail from the old profile.
    – fixer1234
    Nov 17, 2019 at 21:31

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