Can I save my emails from being lost?

[magz]

Same issue as many others that have posted on here the last few weeks. Have domain emails hosted by BT, use outlook on the desktop, can no longer do this. 

We have several email addresses for different users and some access their emails in a different way. 

Personally I was desktop outlook all the way, I had a physical product key as bought outright. Most others are the same, albeit with slightly different versions of outlook. 

For the most of us, we can back up our mailbox . pst files which can be imported back in once everything is changed (although I'm not sure why you'd lose these emails as they are downloaded to desktop outlook) 

The only issue we face is the last few weeks of emails that have only been accessible on the Web version of outlook. The advice is to forward these to a different email account so we don't lose them. I don't know how many emails we might be talking about per user, but it should be doable.

Then we have the one oddity who accesses their emails using the windows mail app. So none of their emails have ever been downloaded to a desktop outlook and therefore there is no file to save.

They've not confirmed yet but my guess is they will have a large number of emails that need to be kept and its just not practical to forward every single one. 

How do I make sure they don't lose all their emails? 

Please help! 

Thanks 

[magz]

Hi TillyFlo

It was a long weekend!!  I have literally just got everyone set back up this morning after added issues along the way.

But, I found a way to save emails from the online mailbox.  Bit of a faff as maximum of 50 emails at a time (unless you pay and you can probably get more) but as it was only for a few weeks it wasn't too bad for me.

First thing, I downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird.  It's another email program.  Set up your office 365 email account - there was something called 'Owl' that was required as an add-in (can't remember what it was for, but it worked) incoming server - outlook.office365.com

Once it was set up then mailbox will download.

Next you can save bulk emails, so I went to the date when it all went wrong (16th Jan) and all emails since then I highlighted, right click and save as - choose a destination folder.

They will each individually save as .eml files

I then downloaded - Cigati EML Converter which can change .eml files to .pst files

I'll not go through the whole process of using that program, you can work your way through it and suss out how it works.  But it's fairly self explanatory.  Just remember you can only select up to 50 emails at a time to convert, if you select more it will only do the first 50.   Once the .pst emails are saved, they can be imported into your desktop outlook.  

Like I say, it's a bit of a faff, but it works and I was desperate for anything to work.

Hope that helps you - can give oyu a bit more details if you get stuck at any point.

🙂

[jaybee69]

Big thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I've tried many options to get the mail from the BT Business Lite email system before coming across this.

Thunderbird and OWL was the key. OWL is an add-in that allows a connection to Exchange/Office 365 as though you are using webmail.

Rather than using the EML converter, I set up  a free OUTLOOK.COM email address and added this to Thunderbird.

I was then able to copy/move emails between the BT and OUTLOOK.COM email accounts.

I then added the newly created OUTLOOK.COM account to the desktop version of Microsoft Outlook from which you can then create an archive/backup .PST file that can be used for import into your new email account.

If needed, you can get a free trial of Office 365 to complete this task.

The advantage to this method is that you can transfer thousands of emails at a time rather than being restircted to the 50 limit of the Cigati EML converter.

Again, many thanks as without this I've a few customers who would have been faced with loosing all of their emails

[TillyFlo]

 am about to give it a whirl I will report back. Thanks

[TillyFlo]

Brilliant 👏👏

You two are super stars.

I set up thunderbird and OWL (BT ACCOUNT) then added my gmail account and just coppied and pasted it all over result!

I have one question, how can you get thunderbird to automatically send emails from one inbox to another as the mail forwarding via BT wont work OBVS extra grateful for help so far and being able to move emails to a suitable place.

Thanks again 

[magz]

So pleased I was able to help you and glad you managed to find a quicker and easier way of copying the emails!

I've never used Thunderbird before this, so don't know exactly what it can do.  I did try to do this also, but couldn't find a solution, something like setting up a rule would be able to do it, but I can't see any option to set up rules.

Since I have migrated my emails into microsoft, I can set up email forwarding so it's not causing me any issues now.

[jaybee69]

You may be able to do this using filters in Thunderbird.

Press ALT to display the Menu bar

Click Tools, Message filters

Click New

Give the rule a name

Uncheck Run manually

Select Match all messages

Under Perform these actions, select Copy and select the Mailbox and folder you would like to forward the message to

Click OK

Note that in order for this to work, you need t have ThunderBird running.

Ideally you would want to use the BT side to forward it automatically, but I agree with you it doesn't work correctly.

Like Magz, mine was more about getting the emails backed up so that we could migrate to a new Exchange

account

[JOC]

Hi, I am in exactly the same situation.  I have been using POP mails through BTBusiness with a hosted domain and business email account and using desktop Outlook to download the emails to my desktop.  As with everyone above I have been absolutely appalled by the move to remove the ability to download the emails to my own computer system.  Yes, as demonstrated above, if you open an email in browser Outlook you can click the 3 dots and download it to the downloads folder on your computer as a .eml file and then open it in desktop outlook.  However, that is only one email at a time, I am sitting with a busy business and have already filled the 0.95 GB which is the pathetic amount space which we have all been given.  As with you all I have a business critical need to get ALL my emails downloaded off the server and it won't work doing it one email at a time.  All my records are within my emails I used Outlook to search my email database.  The Thunderbird route above does appear to have worked for those above, so I will give it a try, though it sounds rather complicated.  However, given the amount I already pay BT for domain and email hosting and internet as a business I think it is a real kick in the teeth that they have automatically moved their valued client onto the bigger email system by default which would have meant we could have continued to have downloaded our emails as we have all been used to doing.  BT - this sucks, big time!

[RichardK]

I totally agree with JOC that I did NOT expect two large global technology companies to dump this un-announced on the business community. I totally get (and agree) that moving away from PoP is a good thing but BT have migrated a massive customer base of serious business users onto a platform that does not meet their needs. I would expect Microsoft and BT to have communicated about this way before it was dumped ceremoniously onto a very valuable customer base.