The Essentials of Email Backup

Backing up your email regularly isn’t nearly as daunting as it may sound; here are four things you should know to as you begin to the email backup process.

Back Up Regularly – And by regularly, we mean at least weekly (if not more), especially if it’s a business email account and you’re inbox is flooded with messages on a daily basis. Pick a dedicated time each week (or day if you’re more committed to the safety of your backups) to complete backups of your new messages and attachments.

Web-Based Emails – Email backup only works for messages that are saved locally through programs such as Thunderbird or Outlook and not a web service such as Gmail. If you want to save emails from a Web-based service, you will first need to download them from the server to your hard drive.

Address Book – What would happen if your computer all of a sudden crashed and you lost your entire address book (assuming there was no backup)? While it may not need to be backed up as frequently as messages, make sure you back up your contacts frequently. Many online email backup programs allow you to program automatic backups whenever a new contact is added.

The Threat of Viruses – One of the most common ways to contract a harmful computer virus is through an email attachment. Outlook Express has settings that allow programs that are sent attached to messages to run automatically; a harmful one could wipe out your hard drive in minutes, let alone lose all your important emails.