Three Ways to Back Up Your Mac Mail

There can be various reasons why a Mac user would want to backup Apple Mail to an external hard drive – to protect important emails from unforeseen data loss disasters, transfer emails to an external hard drive to save disk space, and so on. Fortunately, there are several ways to get this job done. Each of these methods has its own pros and cons. We'll discuss them one by one in the following sections.

Method 1: Back Up Apple Mail with Time Machine

When it comes to Mac backups, Time Machine is usually the first approach that's mentioned. To back up your Apple Mail messages with it, Control-click the Time Machine icon in the Dock and choose Back Up Now from the pop-up menu.

Disadvantages:

• First of all, you need to have Time Machine installed and enabled on your Mac.
• If the Time Machine backup restore fails, you risk data loss.

Method 2: Back Up Apple Mail Using the Export Mailbox Feature

The Mail Export feature is an option for those who want to delete emails permanently while keeping a copy. It allows you to archive your emails effortlessly within Apple Mail. To back up your Apple Mail, you should:

First, create a mailbox. Just open Mail and go to Mail > New Mailbox, and then drag the messages you want into it.

Next, export the mailbox. Right-click the mailbox in the sidebar, and select “Export Mailbox.” Choose where to save the .mbox file, then click “Select.”

Back up Apple Mail using the "Export Mailbox" feature

Drawbacks:

Some users have reported losing their emails while archiving Apple Mail, due to corruption of the emails and occasional unknown errors that pop up for no reason.

Method 3: Back Up Apple Mail Using a Third-Party Mac Backup Utility

Owing to these drawbacks, users may come across certain issues while backing up Apple Mail emails and mailboxes using Time Machine or the Export Mailbox feature of Mail. Hence, it's better to opt for a safer alternative – using a Mac backup software to get the job done.

Step 1: Launch the Mac backup software and click on the “Backup” tab on top > Click the “+” button at the bottom left corner of the left pane to create a backup task – Enter the name for your backup task and hit “OK”.

Step 2. Choose the backup destination to store your Mac Mail email backup, the frequency of automatic backups, and then click 'OK'. Here, if you want to backup Apple Mail to an external hard drive, connect it to the Mac before launching the backup software.

Step 3: Click the “Mail +” button to selectively back up your files and folders, then hit the blue “Start” button to immediately back up your Mac mail.