How to Archive Your Email on a Mac and Keep It for Good

Email archiving for Mac means saving a complete copy of your mail as files on your own disk, in an open format, so it stays readable after the provider deletes it, the account closes or the app you used is gone. This guide explains what archiving is and is not, the options macOS gives you, which file format to keep, and how to build and check an archive of a Gmail, Outlook.com, iCloud or IMAP account. If you already know all that and just want to pick a tool, read our shortlist of the best email archivers for Mac.

Archive, backup and sync are not the same thing

The Archive button in your mail app is a move, not a copy. Apple's Mail guide says archiving moves the message into an Archive mailbox created for that email account. Gmail's help says an archived message can still be found under All Mail. Microsoft's Outlook help says the Archive button does not reduce your mailbox size. In all three cases the mail stays with the provider.

Sync mirrors the server, so a message deleted on your phone also leaves your Mac. A backup is a copy kept elsewhere so you can restore it. An archive, in the sense this page uses, is a backup you keep for years and can still read: complete, searchable and not tied to one app.

Your options on a Mac

• Apple Mail's Export Mailbox. Select one or more mailboxes, choose Mailbox > Export Mailbox and pick a folder. Apple says the export is in mbox format, and that Mail does not overwrite an earlier export but creates a new .mbox file next to it. File > Import Mailboxes brings it back. It is free and built in, but it is a snapshot you repeat by hand.
• Thunderbird. Free and open source, with a macOS download. Mozilla says Thunderbird stores mail as one mbox file per folder by default, with an optional file-per-message (Maildir) store that Mozilla still treats as experimental. The ImportExportTools NG add-on exports messages as EML, PDF and other formats, and folders as mbox.
• Command-line backup tools. Got Your Back (GYB) is an open source tool that backs up Gmail and Google Workspace accounts to a local folder through Gmail's API, and can restore them. It suits people happy in Terminal and covers Google accounts only.
• Dedicated archivers. Mail Archiver X, MailSteward and EagleFiler are paid Mac apps that pull mail into a searchable archive or library, each stored its own way. Our best email archiver for Mac page compares them by use case.
• MailVault. A free mail app for macOS, Windows and Linux that keeps a copy of your mail on your computer as plain .eml files in Maildir-style folders, signs in to Gmail, Microsoft 365, Outlook.com and any IMAP account, and has no MailVault account or server in the path of your mail. The rest of this guide uses it for the step-by-step.

Which format to keep your mail in

The format matters more than the tool, because the archive should outlive the tool.

• .eml files. One message per file, in the internet message format (RFC 5322): headers, body and attachments together. Many mail apps open them directly, and a damaged file affects one message. Maildir is the folder layout that organises them.
• mbox. One file per folder with the messages one after another. It is the most widely supported import format, which is why Apple Mail exports it. You usually have to import it into an app before you can browse it, and one damaged file touches a whole folder.
• An app's own database. Dedicated archivers often use one, and it can make search fast. The trade-off is that reading the archive depends on that app. Before you commit, check that it can export everything to mbox or .eml.

A practical rule: keep at least one copy of your archive in .eml or mbox, whatever else you use. For more on what to check before trusting a tool, see our IMAP backup tool checklist.

Step by step: archive Gmail, Outlook.com, iCloud or IMAP to your Mac with MailVault

MailVault runs on macOS 11 Big Sur or later, on Apple Silicon and Intel. Every step is free unless marked Premium.

1. Install MailVault from the download page.
2. Add your account. Gmail and Microsoft 365 sign in on Google's or Microsoft's own page. Personal Outlook.com, Hotmail and Live.com accounts connect through Microsoft Graph, so there are no IMAP settings to enter. iCloud Mail and other providers use IMAP. For iCloud, MailVault signs in with an app-specific password that you create in your Apple Account; our iCloud Mail export guide walks through it. Your password is held by the system keychain, not by MailVault.
3. Tell MailVault to back up everything. Open Settings > Backup & Restore > Backup Settings. Under What to back up, the default is Archived emails only (locally saved). Switch it to All emails (download from server) so mail that is still only on the server is included. This is also where you can pick a second copy on an external drive or NAS.

4. Run the backup. Open the Backup Schedule tab and press Back up all accounts now, or Back up now on one account's card. It covers every folder of the account. Manual backups are free with no quota from us; the space used is your own disk.

5. Give a big mailbox time. Google limits IMAP downloads to 2,500 MB per day per account, and going over suspends access for typically one hour and up to 24. That applies to every IMAP tool. MailVault stops cleanly at the limit, and the next run carries on where it stopped. A large Gmail account can take several days.
6. Or archive just part of it. To keep only some mail, select messages (or a year, or a whole folder) and choose Archive. That copies them into your vault and leaves the server copy alone. It is free.

One setting to know about: Settings > Storage > Download mode decides how much ordinary cached mail stays on the Mac. The default, Keep Recent, keeps the last few months. It never removes backups or archived mail, so it does not shrink your archive.

How to check the archive is complete

Check the copy before you delete anything on the server.

• Read the row icons. Every message shows whether it is on the server only, in your vault, your only copy, or also on your backup drive. The Vault switch above the folder list shows only what is saved on your Mac.
• Go offline. Turn off Wi-Fi, then open a few old messages with attachments and run a search. Everything that opens now is on your disk.
• Open the files elsewhere. Settings > Backup & Restore > Backup Settings > Open Folder shows the vault in Finder. Open a few .eml files in Apple Mail. If they read correctly there, the archive does not depend on MailVault.
• Compare counts (Premium). Backup health shows server, app and external counts per folder, so you can see which folders are fully saved.

When you are ready to clear the server, MailVault's Archive & Delete (Premium) copies each message into your vault, checks the copy, and only then deletes the server copy. Deleting from the server on its own is free, but then the checking is up to you.

How to keep the archive going

• By hand, free. Run Back up all accounts now whenever you like. Backups are incremental, so later runs download only mail that is new since the last one. See manual backups.
• On a schedule, Premium. Scheduled backups run every hour, once a day, once a week, or at hours you pick, and only while the app is idle. Premium is $4 a month or $25 a year at the current early-access price for the first 100 subscribers (standard pricing after that is $6 a month or $39 a year).

Either way, keep a second copy away from the Mac: the vault is ordinary files, so an external drive or NAS can hold one. For the wider case for a local copy, read how to archive IMAP emails locally.

Frequently asked questions

What to do next

Pick the account you would least like to lose, make a first archive this week and check it with the steps above. To do it with MailVault, it is a free download with no account to create.