Email after leaving Plusnet

[#1]

I will soon be leaving Plusnet (after c.20 years as my ISP) due to move abroad. As you can imagine I’ve built up a significant email mailbox over the years. I understand Plusnet no longer offer an email only service so I’m intending to just take my mailbox “offline” and effectively use as an archive.

Primarily I use the native email on MacBook and iPhone. I’m assuming simply taking the mailbox offline in the native Apple apps will be sufficient to use as a reference archive.

I just wanted to ask if anyone else has done this and were there any issues at all, ?

Many thanks

[#2]

@RichW Do you use the IMAP or the POP3 protocol? - if it is the IMAP, you will need to download your emails to a local archive, as the link to the PN mail servers, and therefore your stored emails, will disappear when your account closes.

[#3]

@RichW 

If you can see all your emails, both sent and received on both MAC and phone then I assume that you will be using IMAP.

As @jab1  advises, unless you download a copy of all emails to local storage they will all be lost when you leave. To try this, switch off your connections with the outside world, both broadband and mobile data, and see if you can access your emails.

[#4]

Thanks John, I’m using IMAP settings to connect to the PN email servers etc. I’d assumed though that a local copy of the email was also pulled down to the Mac or iPhone client. Just as a test I took my iPhone into aiirplane mode and tried to access both sent mail plus some folders with emails from 2017/18 and was able to access (read only obviously). Would this indicate I have a local copy or is it cached ?

[#5]

Thanks Baldrick1, see above response to @jab1 - welcome any further thoughts? Thx

[#6 · Accepted solution]

Not exactly cached - it’s the off line sync store - in some cases it might only be the headers.

There are lots of resources out there explaining how to do what you will need - for example see https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/how-to-archive-imap-emails-locally-but-rem...

If the archive folder is local you must ensure you have a dependable back up strategy.

A pragmatic strategy is to get a free @outlook.com account, configure your email application to use it. Then create storage folders in that account to backup your PN emails. They will then be safely stored on Microsoft’s servers

[#7]

Thanks for the help @Townman - I downloaded outlook desktop client and synced with imap account & folders. Created a local .olm file (same as PST but for Mac) using the outlook export tool. Saved a copy locally and on backup offline NAS. Seems to have done the job !! 😀