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📤 Exporting a Mail Account (EML / MBox)

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📋 Overview

The account export writes every message of one account back out to a downloadable ZIP file. It is the counterpart to the web import: you get a portable archive of the account in a format that any mail client or migration tool can read.

Two formats are offered:

Format What you get Typical use
EML Individual .eml files, organised into folders Re-import into a mail client, per-message processing, long-term readability
MBox Traditional mailbox files — one file per folder Tools and clients that read MBox, bulk text processing

In both cases the messages are written as raw RFC-822 messages, so attachments are included in the export.

💡 Tip: To export only a selection of messages instead of a whole account, use the bulk actions in Mail search.

🧭 Access

  1. Open Mail Accounts in the main menu.
  2. Click the ⋮ (more actions) button on the account row and choose Export. The same entry is on the account's Details page.

Exporting requires the admin or self manager role — standard users see the entry but cannot use it. The export always covers the whole account; there is no date or folder filter.

🖥️ Using the Export Page

The page shows the account's total, incoming and outgoing message counts, so you can see the size of the job before starting it. Then:

  1. Choose the format — EML or MBox.
  2. Press Start Export.

The export runs in the background. You are taken to a status page showing the job ID, the chosen format, the timestamps and the processed/total message counts.

Job statuses

Queued → Running → Completed / Failed / Cancelled → Downloaded

When the job reaches Completed, a download button appears on the status page. The same job is also listed on the Jobs page.

⚠️ Export files are cleaned up automatically. The ZIP is deleted after a successful download, and in any case after 7 days. Download the file while it is still offered — the archive itself is unaffected, you can simply start a new export later.

⚠️ Things to watch out for

  • Large accounts take a while. A big mailbox may need several minutes and the ZIP can become very large, depending on the message volume and attachments. Because the job runs in the background you can close the browser and come back to the status page later.
  • Server disk space. The ZIP is assembled on the server before you download it, so make sure there is enough free space next to the archive.
  • "Export file not found" — the job has not finished yet, or the file has already been downloaded or removed by the 7-day cleanup. Start a new export.
  • No filter options — the export is all-or-nothing per account. Use the search-page export for a subset.
  • Not a compliance export. For an audit-ready data-media handover with an index file, use the Audit Data Export instead — it produces a package in the tabular mass-data format that audit tools expect.