Any BT Mail experts about?

Peter B

Peter B

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Hi

I'm looking to save a load of emails from my BT Mail account to my computer as it's possible I may move away from BT at some time. In the email Actions dropdown menu there is a "save to computer" option, but this only seems to allow saving 1 email at a time, as confirmed by BT's online customer help. I find it hard to believe that there isn't a way to save a stack of emails at once, and better still would be saving folders full of them, but apparently this might indeed be the case. Any and all help gratefully received! :thinking:
 
Can't you use an email client to download them all to your PC? Thunderbird, or similar.
 
RIR said:
Can't you use an email client to download them all to your PC? Thunderbird, or similar.
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I don't know Robert. I can certainly forward the emails individually to another one of my non-BT email accounts, but that's going to be as time consuming as saving them individually.

Edit: it seems I may be able to create a rule that would allow me to forward them, so I'll need to investigate that possibility.
 
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As said, use Thunderbird or similar email client and you can archive them from there.
 
Download Mozilla Thunderbird (free), configure it with your BT account, and it will download all your emails to your PC.
 
Or if you use outlook, set it to download as much mail as you need then export it to a PST.
 
sphexx said:
As said, use Thunderbird or similar email client and you can archive them from there.
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Thanks. Doing that now and will check out the archiving part tomorrow.

RIR said:
Download Mozilla Thunderbird (free), configure it with your BT account, and it will download all your emails to your PC.
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Thanks.

landwomble said:
Or if you use outlook, set it to download as much mail as you need then export it to a PST.
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Thanks. What's a PST for non-techy types like me? :thinking:
 
Oh, and get a gmail address or similar so that next time you change your phone/broadband supplier you don't have to change your address or worry about losing your old mail. And get two addresses and set each as alternative contact for password resets so you can still get resets if you are locked out of one account.
 
There are two types of Outlook Data Files used by Outlook. An Outlook Data File (.pst) is used for most accounts. If you are using a Microsoft Exchange account, your items are usually delivered to and saved on the mail server. To allow you to work with your messages even when you can’t connect to the mail server, a second type of data file that is named an offline Outlook Data File (.ost) is kept on your computer.

The primary differences between the two types of Outlook data files are as follows:

Outlook Data Files (.pst) are used for POP3, IMAP, and web-based mail accounts. When you want to create archives or back up your Outlook folders and items on your computer, such as Exchange accounts, you must create and use additional .pst files.

Outlook Data Files (.ost) are used when you have an Exchange account and want to work offline or use or use the default Cached Exchange Mode. This type of data file is also used for accounts that you set up with the Outlook Connector for Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail). Outlook Data Files (.ost) are always copies of items that are saved on a mail server and don’t have to be backed up like Outlook Data Files (.pst).
 
one note, PST are easily corruptable. they cannot be shared (i.e accessed simultaneously)

i would not let them grow too big either, although the PST created in newer versions of outlook for example support massive sizes they get pretty slow to access and it's a lot of data to lose when they do corrupt.
 
sphexx said:
Oh, and get a gmail address or similar so that next time you change your phone/broadband supplier you don't have to change your address or worry about losing your old mail. And get two addresses and set each as alternative contact for password resets so you can still get resets if you are locked out of one account.
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Thanks Richard. The alternative is already in place and another one is cross-referenced, but I had gone for the BT addy as it gives receipts for messages whereas gmail (notoriously) doesn't, and sometimes you just need to know that the message got through. (y) Far too many errors with BT, including regular failure to contact the server from either of my mobile devices, even when used with their preferred Chrome browser. (n)
 
neil_g said:
one note, PST are easily corruptable. they cannot be shared (i.e accessed simultaneously)

i would not let them grow too big either, although the PST created in newer versions of outlook for example support massive sizes they get pretty slow to access and it's a lot of data to lose when they do corrupt.
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Everyone using Outlook, take heed of this advice. There is a reason we now use Thunderbird at work and not Outlook, and this is it.

The number of corrupt PST files I had to rebuild in the days we were using outlook was depressing. Especially as we don't have an IT department so it just fell to me.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Everyone using Outlook, take heed of this advice. There is a reason we now use Thunderbird at work and not Outlook, and this is it.

The number of corrupt PST files I had to rebuild in the days we were using outlook was depressing. Especially as we don't have an IT department so it just fell to me.
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Don't have an issue with PST's (Archives) or OST's. One of our clients has over 5000 users and accounts. Something else going on to cause corruption?
 
Peter B said:
Thanks Richard. The alternative is already in place and another one is cross-referenced, but I had gone for the BT addy as it gives receipts for messages whereas gmail (notoriously) doesn't, and sometimes you just need to know that the message got through. (y) Far too many errors with BT, including regular failure to contact the server from either of my mobile devices, even when used with their preferred Chrome browser. (n)
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That's because not all email clients support read receipts, so they're fairly meaningless outside a managed network, no receipt quite often means "client doesn't support it" rather than "person hasn't read it".
 
KitsuneAndy said:
That's because not all email clients support read receipts, so they're fairly meaningless outside a managed network, no receipt quite often means "client doesn't support it" rather than "person hasn't read it".
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I understand that Andy, but when you deal with the council or the taxman their system will work with receipts and it's nice to have proof that something has been received at the other end, especially when there are deadlines involved. ;)
 
Which is why you should leave mail on a server with professionals looking after if and only keep a local copy for convenience...

Pst files don't have internal error checking and are relatively fragile , and don't really scale well to a very large size however they are a conversation ient wat of moving mail from one place to another.

The other option is pick someone like Gmail and use their import via imap option to import your bt mail. This is actually quite a slick process...
 
neil_g said:
technically BT mail is yahoo anyway, and that's never been particularly good.
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BT migrated from Yahoo some time ago.

I'd echo the advice to get Thunderbird and add the BT email as an IMAP account. That will sync the server with your machine. You can then archive what you want to local storage.

I never recommend Outlook other than as an Exchange client. It is too vulnerable to PST damage.
 
Andy Taylor said:
BT migrated from Yahoo some time ago.

I'd echo the advice to get Thunderbird and add the BT email as an IMAP account. That will sync the server with your machine. You can then archive what you want to local storage.

I never recommend Outlook other than as an Exchange client. It is too vulnerable to PST damage.
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Your right, about 2 years ago they split from Yahoo (I also lost my premium flickr account)

Personally never had issues with using outlook and pst's
 
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