I am trying to archive emails from the IMAP server operated by my ISP because there are some issues with archiving off line from my Thunderbird email client.
My ISP is running debian servers with Roundcube installed from Debian repo.
Unfortunately the automatic zipping up of many messages and downloading or the ability to zip and download whole folders is discussed in forums and Roundcube instructions but these facilities are I understand provided by plugins and not available on the webmail from my ISP.
It is clearly not possible for me to install any plugin on my ISP’s server although I am asking, and I cannot find any such plugins so they may no longer be available so my question is what options are available to download large numbers of .eml files zipped or otherwise.
Hi
Does this help? Archived Messages | Thunderbird Help
Have you checked the email server is only IMAP or offers pop3 as well?
Hi Malcolm,
Many thanks for the link and help. My normal email client is Mozilla Thunderebird and I use IMAP on ISP’s server because several people have to access these messages on different machines and also by using Webmail.
The background to this is quite complicated but the objective is to have reliable and easily accessible archive records, held off line where ex staff and colleagues’ work emails may be held securely for a certain period for reasons including legal requirements. It is also intended to reduce the number of messages held on the ISP’s server.
I have had helpful advice previously and am planning on using two sets of offline storage. One archive set will be of mbox files created using ImportExportToolsNG plugin on Thunderbird. This is the quickest and easiest approach but mbox format has some potential vulnerabilities.
The second archive set I am intending to use the tool Mbox2XML which would give me easy browser access to archives but would not enable me to import the records back into Thunderbird.
I have also been looking at using Maildir as an option but this would require a change to my email client setup and I don’t know enough about this yet.
My reason for looking further into this is a preference to go directly from IMAP server to archive without going through an email client. This minimises steps required and gives me .eml files (zipped together) which is the most “universal” format, I believe. The ability to download zipped email messages and whole folders in this manner is carefully described in the Import and Export sections of the Roundcube but these appear to rely on plugins and they are not installed on my ISP’s server and indeed I cannot find them listed in the Roundcube Plugin Repository.
Grateful for your thoughts on this.
Regards,
Budge
Hi
Script it with perl… https://www.example-code.com/perl/imap.asp
I don’t know about TB and Maildir, using Kmail here, but I do sort of what you want to achieve, i.e. I filter messages to “Local Folders”, which is located at ~/.local/share/local-mail . These contain all message from several accounts ( amongst which mailing list messages older than 90 days ), going back to 2002.
Wow, all that know how!!! Sadly mostly beyond my pay grade but many thanks. I didn’t get much help from ISP asking for a plugin for their server as they say the archiving facility is already available. Doesn’t do what I want yet but perhaps one of these scripts will have the solution.
Will keep trying.
Regards,
Budge
Hi
I would go for the first one and try it out, I don’t run imap, but maybe one of the other Forum members who does could help. If it doesn’t work, post the errors and will see if can help 
Hi
Maybe getmail or fetchmail, maybe have a look here at all the tools… https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/server:mail
I still think that the solution should be that TB does work, instead of using workarounds.