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How to Backup Your Email

16 Sep

Email, email, email….how I loathe you and love you all in one. – Author Known -> Me speaking to my inbox at 5:30 this morning.

Most people have a backup strategy for their file systems, yet, many do not backup their communications. To some, email is a necessary evil and would rather user carrier pigeons of old to communicate, while others see email as the lifeblood of their operations. If you are the latter, you need to backup your emails.

This is not a difficult task. In fact, taking 15 minutes of investment now can save you hours of nightmare later. Here’s a simple plan on how to backup your email.

  1. If you do not use Gmail already create a primary Gmail account. Gmail offers 7 gigabytes of free storage for your email conversations.
  2. Create a secondary Gmail account as a backup email address. Set the user name to your primary account plus the word “backup” (i.e. myemailbackup@gmail.com)
  3. Create a Yahoo email account which provides free unlimited storage.
  4. Log into your primary Gmail account and click the Settings button.
    • Locate the “Accounts and Import” tab and add any external email addresses you want Gmail to check by adding it to “Check mail using POP3.” You can also forward or CC this primary Gmail account if you use another email provider. Either way, you need all of your external emails to come into Gmail.
    • Click the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab and click “Add a Forwarding Address”. Enter your secondary Gmail account address.
    • Log out of Gmail
  5. Log into your secondary Gmail account and click the Settings button.
    • Open the email that was sent to you by Gmail verifying that you own this address and click the link to verify.
    • Click the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab and click “Add a Forwarding Address”. Enter your Yahoo account address.
    • Log out of Gmail
  6. Log into your Yahoo account,  open the email sent to you by Gmail to verify address ownership and click the verification link.
  7. That’s it! You’re done.

Here is the system we just set up:

We simply set up a triple contingency plan. If you can’t access your desktop or mobile email client, log into your primary Gmail account online. If your primary Gmail server is down (this has happened to me a few times over 5 years), log into your secondary Gmail account. The chances that your secondary account is on a different server is very good. Gmail outages tend to be targeted to specific servers and not the entire application. If for some reason, you can’t log into your secondary account, go to Yahoo! and get your archived emails there.

IMPORTANT! Don’t Delete – Archive Your Email

If you use Gmail as your primary email client, it’s important that you never delete an email to remove it from the inbox unless it’s junk mail. Simply hit the “Archive” button to make them disappear. You can retrieve archived emails through search or by clicking the “All Mail” link. With the space allocation, there is no reason to delete potentially important communications.