How to Back Up or Copy Individual Messages With Windows Mail

Back up your emails and attachments

By
Heinz Tschabitscher
Heinz Tschabitscher
Heinz Tschabitscher
Writer
  • University of Vienna
A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.
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Updated on February 4, 2021

What to Know

  • Open the Windows Mail folder containing the message you want to back up.
  • In Windows Explorer, select a backup location.
  • Highlight and drag the message to the Explorer window and drop it.

This article explains how to back up or copy individual messages in Windows Mail. It includes information on opening or restoring the backup copies.

Back Up or Copy Individual Messages as EML Files

You may have emails in Windows Mail that carry particular importance. You can back up all your email data, and you can create backup copies of individual messages by exporting the emails as .eml files.

Back up or copy individual messages in Windows Mail by exporting the messages as EML files:

  1. Open the folder containing the message you want to back up or copy.

  2. In Windows Explorer, open the folder where you want to save the backup copy.

    Ideal places to store email backups are network locations, secondary hard disks, flash drives, media players, DVD-ROMs, and other remote storage devices.

  3. Highlight and drag the message to the Explorer window. If the File Explorer window is hidden, drag the message to the File Explorer icon on the taskbar, and the folder moves to the front.

  4. Drop the message onto its destination.

Open or Restore the Backup Email Copies

Open the backup email copies to create a copy of the message with the extension .eml. If you can't open the files by double-clicking, reassociate the .eml files.

You can also import backup files to Windows Mail (possibly on another computer) by dragging and dropping the files into any folder in Windows Mail.

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