Emails are an essential part of our daily communication, whether for personal or professional purposes. However, sometimes we may lose access to our email accounts due to hacking, deletion, or corruption. In such cases, it is important to have a backup of our emails so that we can restore them if needed.

One way to backup your emails is to use a tool called Email Backup Tool, which is a Python script that can download and save your emails from Gmail, Outlook, or any other IMAP server. In this article, we will show you how to use this tool and what are its features and benefits.

Why This Email Backup Tool Exists ?

Last year, I needed to migrate emails from one provider to another. I have found some online but existing solutions raised security concerns. Trusting a third-party tool with our business-critical communication wasn't an option. We needed a secure, in-house solution to ensure a seamless transition without compromising data confidentiality. So, I decided to build my own email backup tool.

This email backup tool emerged from that specific need. It allowed us to migrate emails securely and efficiently, keeping all our data in-house. Recognizing its broader value, I decided to refactor it and make it open-source. Now, organizations can leverage this tool for their email backups, prioritizing security while fostering a collaborative development environment. The community can contribute to make it even better !

What can Email Backup Tool do ?

Tool-backup-emails is a simple and lightweight tool that can backup your emails in a few steps. Some of the features of this tool are:

1. Secure Connection: It establishes a secure link to your email server using SSL/TLS encryption. This ensures your login credentials and emails remain confidential during transfer.

2. Mailbox Exploration: It retrieves a list of all folders within your mailbox, allowing you to choose which ones to back up.

3. Backup Organization: It creates corresponding folders on your local storage to mirror the structure of your email server. This maintains a familiar organization for your backed-up emails.

4. Targeted Retrieval: It fetches specific emails using their unique identifiers, ensuring a complete and efficient backup.

5. Visual Feedback: It utilizes a progress bar powered by the tqdm library to keep you informed about the backup process. You can easily track the progress and estimated time remaining.

6. Interruption Handling: It gracefully handles interruptions like pressing Ctrl+C during the backup. This prevents data corruption and allows you to resume the backup process later if needed .

In essence, this program offers a secure, organized, and informative way to create a local copy of your emails, providing peace of mind in case of server issues or accidental deletion.

How to Use Email Backup Tool ?

To use tool-backup-emails, you need to have Python 3 installed on your computer. You also need to download the tool from :

Then, for easy use, you need to follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal or command prompt and navigate to the folder where you downloaded the tool.

   git clone https://github.com/ludndev/tool-backup-emails.git

2. Run the command pip install -r requirements.txt to install the required libraries.

3. Edit or add the file accounts.csv with your preferred text editor and enter the details of your email accounts and servers, such as username, password, host, port, etc. You can also specify the backup options, such as format, folder, compression, encryption, etc.

   

4. Save the file and run the command python email_backup_tool.py to start the backup process.

5. Wait for the backup to finish and check the output folder for the backup files.

6. Add a cron task to schedule the backup periodically.

   0 0 * * * /usr/bin/python3 /path/to/your/script/email_backup_tool.py

For advanced usage, refer to the GitHub repository for command-line interface (CLI) arguments and various examples.

What next ?

Email Backup Tool is a springboard for a powerful email backup tool ! Here are some ideas for future versions:

• Improved Features: Enhanced file naming, command-line arguments, optional zipping, and more!

• Skip Downloads: Avoid backing up already downloaded emails.

• Single Account Backup: Target specific email accounts.

• Multi-format Support: Choose your preferred file format (EML, PST, MBOX).

• GUI Version: A user-friendly graphical interface for easy interaction.

• Restore Function: Restore emails to a remote server (advanced).

• Multithreading Speed: Leverage multithreading for faster backups.

• Distribute Files: Create executables on Github release for Unix-type, OSX, Windows, and more.

I'd love your input ! If you have ideas for new features or bug fixes, feel free to contribute on https://github.com/ludndev/tool-backup-emails. Let's build a fantastic email backup tool together !

Email Backup Tool is a useful tool that can help you backup your emails from any IMAP server. It is easy to use and has many features and options to customize your backup. It is also free and open-source, so you can modify it or contribute to it if you want. If you are looking for a way to backup your emails, you should give Email Backup Tool a try.