IMAP Email backup to .eml files named by date - time- subject - sender to local folders that match IMAP folders

Question

I'm looking for a software that will backup email, to local disk, as .eml files and place them in local folders on the disk that correspond to their folders, hierarchically, in the IMAP account. I also need the .eml files to be named as YYYYMMDD - time - subject - sender.eml

• app from mailstore.com almost does this expect that the spec indicates that the filename isn't named as I require
• app from emailarchiverpro.com nearly does all of this, including retaining the folder structure, except that it converts the emails as .pdfs (this is certainly useful to me, but I still also want .eml files)

Mac, Windows or Linux GUI based app would be fine. Thanks.

Answer 1

The answer is the MsgExtract app from maildev.com does name the .eml files like what I need and it does place the .eml files in folders named after their IMAP equivalents and also retain the hierarchy. I have confirmed that this works and will try to provide screenshots.

I would note that if you have many emails in your Inbox that are unsorted into your folders, you will find that these unsorted emails will start to build up as .eml files first during the backup processs, this initial mislead me into thinking that the whole backup was going to be flat, however, waiting longer I found that the folders were created with the emails in them, so all correct.

Answer 2

Mail Backup X does this. for better mail security, you can place the back up in a mirror database as well.

Answer 3

the one tool i can clearly recommend for this task is the Thunderbird-Addon ImportExportTools:

• it can export mails as eml-, html-, text- and pdf-files with a html- or csv-index or also export as a single mbox-file.
• the export can be applied for a single mail, selected mails in bulk, all mails or even automatically as backup (full or incremental).
• for the export the folder hierarchy and subfolders can be respected/included.
• for the name of the files you can select date (with or without time), subject, sender/recipient, receipt-order,...
• it can also import mbox-, eml- and emlx-files.
• it is FOSS (GPL3) and therefor adding lacking features is more or less easily possible.
• Thunderbird and ImportExportTools are cross-platform available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
• it has a GUI and should also be usable by tech-unsavvy users.