Archive Your Email and Files

Before leaving Brandeis, you may want to keep a copy of your email and any files you've stored in your UNet home directory.

Copying files from the UNet home directory

Either copy the files and folders directly to your computer as they are, or make a zip file of the contents of your UNet home directory and copy that zip file to your computer.  To make a zip file on a PC, right-click on the folder you wish to zip and choose Send to, Compressed (zipped) folder. To make a zip file on a Mac, control-click on the folder you wish to zip and choose Compress "foldername".  

Archiving your Email (for Bmail users)

Open your web browser and enter the url

https://bmail.brandeis.edu/zimbra/user/YOUR USERNAME/inbox.zip

This will download a zip file of the contents of your Inbox.  To get zip files of your other mail folders, replace "inbox.zip" with "sent.zip", and so on.

Advanced downloading tips 

It is possible to pull out only mail that matches certain dates or flags:

https://bmail.brandeis.edu/zimbra/user/YOURUSERNAME/?fmt=zip&query=before:10/9/2006

Read more on the zimbra forums:

http://www.zimbra.com/forums/administrators/12003-mail-backup-options-end-users.html#post62110

Importing your Email into a client

It is possible to import the emails from the files in the archive to Thunderbird or Mail for Mac.

Thunderbird (PC) 

  1. Save the archive. Unzip it in a location that will be easy to reference later, such as your desktop. A folder will be created
  2. Launch Thunderbird, and look in the “Local Folders” section. If you have messages stored in the folders there, rename the folders to something unique so that they won’t be overwritten by any imported mail folders.
  3. Quit Thunderbird (it should not be running while importing messages).
  4. Open the folder created in step 1. There will be a subfolder inside named Mail. Inside, you should see a separate file for each of the e-mail folders that you use (e.g. “INBOX”, “Sent”, etc.)
  5. Click one of the files, then press Ctrl+A on the keyboard to select all of the files in the folder.
  6. Press Ctrl+C on the keyboard to copy all the files into the computer’s memory.
  7. Double-Click the “My Computer” icon, either on your desktop or on the Start Menu.
  8. Navigate to “C:\Documents and Settings\username” (where username is your actual username)
  9. If you see a folder named “Application Data”, double-click on it. If the folder is not there, type “\Application Data” (without the quotes) to the end of the text in the address bar of the window.
  10. Double-click on “Thunderbird”, then “Profiles”
  11. You should see a folder with a randomized name, such as “firngf5k.default”. Double-click on it, then on “Mail”, then on “Local Folders”
  12. Click one of the files in the “Local Folders” window, then press Ctrl+V on your keyboard. The mail files that you downloaded will begin to be copied into your Thunderbird profile, so Thunderbird can display them.

When all files have finished copying, launch Thunderbird. You can find your imported mail under “Local Folders”.

Mail (Mac)

  1. Click on "File" in the menu bar, then on "Import Mailboxes"
  2. On the "Import Data From..." window, select "Other", then click "Continue"
  3. Navigate to the location of your unzipped archive. Select that folder, then click "Choose"
  4. Make sure that all the mail folders you want to import are checked, then click "Continue"

The mail import process may take several minutes if you have a lot of mail. A progress bar will indicate how far along the process is. You can use other applications (besides Mail) while the import is happening. When the import process is complete, you can find your mail under the folder named "Import".

Importing your Email into GMail

Although it's not supported by either LTS or Google, a third party program called GMail Loader should let you copy mail from the Brandeis mail servers (or anywhere else) to your Gmail.

For the program to work, you already have to have downloaded all of your email onto your local computer. You can do that through Thunderbird, say, or with a Bmail account archive.
This page was last modified on: Jun 23, 2009