Windows Live Mail 2011 is one of the few mail clients that stores mail in MailDir format, and yes that’s a good thing because if one mail corrupts itself for whatever reason, it doesn’t affect your other emails (whereas with mbox it can).
If you want to backup all the mail that’s in WLMail 2011, where are the locally cached emails? They do exist and you can locate them if you know where to get the info.
The video below shows exactly how to find the “store folder” for all your mail in WLMail 2011. From there you can set up a periodic (meaning nightly, weekly, monthly, etc.) backup using your backup software of choice.
This is especially good info for those of you using POP accounts in WLMail 2011, because even though “leave copy on server” leaves inbox copies on the mail server, it doesn’t account for the Sent Items folder at all as all of that is local to your computer.
See video below for details.
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And so, does restoring from your back up consist of merely putting these files back where you found them?
Can documents be opened from within the backup?
In answer to your first question, yes – however you will be better off dragging and dropping the emails from the backup into a folder you create in “Storage Folders” inside WLMail first. You can mass-select EMLs outside WLMail (such as from a local folder on the Desktop), drag them into any folder within WLMail and the mail client will recognize and index them. After the WLMail import/index, drag them to their intended location (such as back into a Hotmail folder).
You can see how this works by performing a simple test. Drag any email from within WLMail outside the client on the Desktop. This will create a copy of the EML. Create folder under “Storage Folders” in WLMail. Drag the EML from the Desktop to that folder you created. You’ll see WLMail import and index it.
In answer to your second question, yes. Any EML copied can be opened individually by either WLMail, Thunderbird or other mail client that recognizes EML files (which is pretty much all of them).