Windows 7 - Saving Mail to Hard Drive

Hi!

I have a lot of email messages that I would like to save to my hard drive or
to a memory stick.  I've read the help about saving the messages so they can
be accessed at another computer.

1.)  Is there a way to save specific folders from my MSN account or will all
emails be saved?
2.)  Is there a way to save the messages into a Word document, or another
form that does not need to be opened with an email account?  There are a lot
of messages, so I'm looking for something that would do this for many
messages at once, rather than one by one.

I'm using Windows XP and MSN 9.5.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Margie

Hello, Margie.
Yes, you can most certainly do this, but it will be one at a time.

In MSN Explorer, go to your mail.
Open a message that you wish to save.
On the menu, select File/Save As...

You will have several choices for saving the message. It can be saved as a file
with the extension .email to a location of your choosing.

If you save the messages as .txt, you will lose all formatting and embedded
pictures.

If you save as HTML, you probably won't get the pictures, but you'll get the
formatting.

I tested opening the .email files with Microsoft Word and they came up fine,
with formatting and pictures intact. So, open Windows Explorer and navigate to
where you saved the messages from MSN Explorer. If you double click them, MSN
Explorer will open. If you hold the Shift Key and Right Click one of the files,
you can select Open With... from the menu and then use Microsoft Word to open
the saved files.

Hope that helps.
-steve

--
Stephen Boots
MVP Windows Live
Windows Live OneCare Forum Moderator
sboots@mvps.org

One can also select and drag messages from MSN Mail to the Desktop or a
folder.  This allows multiple messages to be saved at once.  The saved files
are type ".email" with names derived from the subject line.  They get
numbers added if there happen to be duplicates.

I think what we are all hoping for is a way to crack ".msnbak" files, and
open individual messages, without using MSN Explorer, but there doesn't seem
to be any readily available.  Still, these are meant to copy all of one's
locally stored email from one computer to another and work quite well for
that, as long as one continues using MSN Explorer.

Another option is "Mail & More", "Help & Settings", "Email Settings",
contacts".  Follow the prompts and put copies of all email and/or contacts
in your Outlook Express store folder.  A way to keep the messages separate
is to have multiple Outlook Express identities.  If you know where the store
folder is, it can easily be copied to another hard drive location or a
memory stick.

Saludos cordiales,

Earle

embedded
the
fine,
navigate to
MSN
files,
open




--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Both Steve and Earle's responses really helped a lot.  Thank You!  This is
all in an effort to archive certain emails and then remove them from my
active MSN mail folders.

I will keep the files formatted as .emails because I would like to keep all
the formatting.  I was able to open them in Word which is great.  Doing this
gives you the message only with no attachments.  Keeping the files in .email
retains the attachments which you can get to by double clicking on the
message and opening up MSN Explorer.  So I have a few options here.

Earle's suggestion of dragging the files from an MSN folder to a folder in
Explorer worked great!  It is exactly what I was looking for.  I have one
more question on this.  Because the names are derived by the subject line, is
there a way to edit the subject line in MSN mail to make it more descriptive,
before creating the .email file?

Thanks again!!
Margie

There doesn't seem to be.  The subject is after all part of the message that
you sent or received, a sort of historical record.

Glad to be of some help.

Saludos cordiales,

Earle

drive
they
will
another
are a
appreciated.
as a
files
and
seem
one's
for
and
contacts
separate
store
get
them,
the
to




--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

I have one last question.  When I open the message in Word, it seems that I
lose some message information from the most recent thread, i.e. the sender,
the date, who was cc'd on the message.  Did this happen to you also?  Is
there a way to keep those details?

Thanks again!
Margie

If you open the file with Notepad you should see all the information.  It is
still there, but apparently Word won't display it.  If you want to format
the message for printing, then you can copy the message information out of
Notepad and paste it into Word.

Saludos cordiales,

Earle

I
sender,
drive or
they can
will all
another
a lot
appreciated.
a file
embedded
the
fine,
navigate to
them, MSN
files,
open



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Thanks Earle.  I am not sure that is the best solution for me, but you and
Steve have helped SO much already!!

Thanks again,
Margie

If you can get Word to display the headers, let us know how you do it!

Cheers,

Earle

It is
format
of
that
Is
are
many
saved as
get
up
the
Word to



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Margie,

Make a new folder in your my documents, label it Master Email Folder.  Go into the folder and make new folders with your MSN folder name "on MSN" give it in the name master email like this (Sentmessagesmasteremail).  You will want to have MSN open about 3/4 screen, open your new Master email folder so you can see your folders of the same name in the remaining 1/4 of your screen, select the folder you want to copy on MSN, select the check mark at the top to select all the emails, on the top email, not on the name sent from but in an open space on that bar, left click and hold, then drag it to your new folder of the same name, release mouse and you just copied all your emails at once into that folder, go into your new folder of the same name in your master email folder and make sure that all of them copied.  The file size will increase a little bit but thats ok.  Dont delete your emails on MSN just yet.  Close out MSN including MSN messanger.  Then open one of the new master folders you just created and saved your emails to.  Double click on one to see if you can read the contents just like in MSN but now on your folder.  Check some that have pictures in to see if you can view them.  Pictures may not save correctly and you may have to save them directly from inside the email.  Once you have made sure you can open the emails, open MSN back up.  Click the email settings at the bottom left side of your screen, select import or export emails, select copy emails to save on this computer, this will save them into a file so if something goes wrong you can import them as if you were putting them on another computer just as a back up.  If your email folder is too big and you want to save space on your hard drive you can always burn them to a CD or DVD as data.  Any questions please email me.  Thanks



Brent

Margie,

Make a new folder in your my documents, label it Master Email Folder.  Go into the folder and make new folders with your MSN folder name "on MSN" give it in the name master email like this (Sentmessagesmasteremail).  You will want to have MSN open about 3/4 screen, open your new Master email folder so you can see your folders of the same name in the remaining 1/4 of your screen, select the folder you want to copy on MSN, select the check mark at the top to select all the emails, on the top email, not on the name sent from but in an open space on that bar, left click and hold, then drag it to your new folder of the same name, release mouse and you just copied all your emails at once into that folder, go into your new folder of the same name in your master email folder and make sure that all of them copied.  The file size will increase a little bit but thats ok.  Dont delete your emails on MSN just yet.  Close out MSN including MSN messanger.  Then open one of the new master folders you just created and saved your emails to.  Double click on one to see if you can read the contents just like in MSN but now on your folder.  Check some that have pictures in to see if you can view them.  Pictures may not save correctly and you may have to save them directly from inside the email.  Once you have made sure you can open the emails, open MSN back up.  Click the email settings at the bottom left side of your screen, select import or export emails, select copy emails to save on this computer, this will save them into a file so if something goes wrong you can import them as if you were putting them on another computer just as a back up.  If your email folder is too big and you want to save space on your hard drive you can always burn them to a CD or DVD as data.  Any questions please email me.  Thanks



Brent

Do you realize that this thread dates from July 2007 and has been resolved?

cf.
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.msn.discussion/browse_frm/thread/842b40d3c85604ed

Hi Brent,

It is close to a year since you posted your note, but I just checked back
due to an unexpected change with Verizon.   Earle & Steve helped a lot, but
now I think your advice works out best for me.

We just upgraded from Verizon DSL to Verizon FIOS and no one told us that
MSN Premium ( the MSN Explorer and email) would not be supported.  It was not
transferred over and my MSN account was shut down and is no longer active.  I
was able to get my favorites and my Inbox by using TrueSwitch, but my stored
messages on my pc were in limbo.  It is totally frustrating that Microsoft
would create a product that enables you to save things locally, but you can't
acccess without continuing their service.  These messages should be more
portable!!!

Aside from that, I like your idea of setting up the "masteremail" folders to
coincide with the folders on MSN.  It makes a lot of sense.  I was able to
get back on MSN for 5 minutes at a time and copy each MSN folder into my
masteremail folders.  The process was so fast, I was done before my 5 minutes
were up!

When I double clicked on a message, it wanted to start up MSN again.  I
found a trick though.  If you right click on the message and select
Properties', on the General tab of the pop-up box, and the 'Type of File'
section, there is a 'Change' button.  If you click on that you can select
another program to open the emails.  I selected Word.

What I liked about this is that each individual message is retained in the
new 'masteremail' folders with the subject line serving as the filename and
the date the message was sent is the file's save date.  If you used the files
in C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\MSN\db30\, you can't tell what message is what.  You would
spend hours going through each one.  And when you open in Word, the to, from,
cc, date and subject line of the email would be missing entirely.

So I need to thank you tremendously!  This is a solution I can live with.
There were some important emails I wanted to keep and to be able to review
again.

I hope this helps some other folks who may have the same problem.  At this
point I did not check any attachments because I was more interested in the
messages themselves.  But by opening in Word as I did above, the attachments
will be lost.

Thanks again Brent.  If anyone else has other solutions, please respond.
Margie



folders you just created and saved your emails to.  Double click on one to see if you can read the contents just like in MSN but now on your folder.  Check some that have pictures in to see if you can view them.  Pictures may not save correctly and you may have to save them directly from inside the email.  Once you have made sure you can open the emails, open MSN back up.  Click the email settings at the bottom left side of your screen, select import or export emails, select copy emails to save on this computer, this will save them into a file so if something goes wrong you can import them as if you were putting them on another computer just as a back up.  If your email folder is too big and you want to save space on your hard drive you can always burn them to a CD or DVD as data.  Any questions please email me.  Thanks

You are required to be a member to post replies.  After logging in or becoming a member, you will be redirected back to this page.

You are required to be a member to post replies.  After logging in or becoming a member, you will be redirected back to this page.

I found this reply in the forum for my question but can't seem to find the file, menu, or save as buttons in the email page for hotmail. Please help.




Open a message that you wish to save.

On the menu, select File/Save As..."