While most users never back up their emails, regularly backing them up is a great practice. All webmail providers offer a way to back up and download emails.
When you use the full backup option, all emails in your email account are backed up. What if you want to back up a specific email? For instance, you might want to back up an email containing your investment details.
The Outlook New app in Windows 11 lets you back up individual emails. Yes, the Outlook New app can be used to save and back up individual emails to your PC as an EML file.
What is an EML file?
An EML file, as the name of the extension might indicate, is a standard used to store individual email messages. The best part is that all email clients support the EML file format. Hence, the backed-up EML file containing your email can be opened with any popular desktop email client, such as Outlook New, Outlook Old, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Apple Mail. In other words, you can open the EML file not only on a Windows running computer but also on other computers, if required.
What does an EML file contain?
An EML file generally contains almost all the information in an email. That is, sender’s and receiver’s email addresses, date, subject, attachments (if any), and of course, email body.
Back up an individual email messages in the Outlook New app in Windows 11
Step 1: Open the Outlook New app.
Step 2: Find and open the email that you want to back up.
Step 3: Next, click the More actions icon (three dots icon, as you can see in the picture below), click Save as, and then click the Save as EML option.
Step 4: Type a name for the email (ensure that you are giving a correct name that you can use to help you identify the email), select a location of your choice, and then click the Save button to back up the email to your Windows 11 PC.
Please note that the email file (EML file) can be opened with any popular email client. So, ensure to save emails with crucial information in a secure place. If required, encrypt it using file archiving software like 7-Zip.
Open the .EML file in Windows 11
As said earlier, most of the desktop email clients support the EML file format. So, you can open it with Outlook New, Outlook Old, Apple Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird.
To open an EML file, right-click the EML file, click Open with, and then select an email client of your choice. Alternatively, you may double-click the EML file to open it with the default email client.
NOTE: The Outlook Classic/Old version does not let you save an email as an EML file. However, an EML file can be opened with the Outlook Classic program.
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