A dedicated, easy-to-use backup app for Apple Mail and Entourage

emailbackupEmail backup is a simple, easy-to-use app that offers dedicated email backup for Apple Mail and Entourage v.X and 2004.

It backs up all the files needed to restore your email in the event of a corruption or some other disaster.

The single-paned interface allows you to specify the backup destination and options to schedule the day and time:

emailbackupmain

A revised version released today adds an option to turn verbose logging on and off, fixes a rare freezing issue that occurred on some systems and adds a progress indicator for manual backups.

Of course, there are many options for creating a regular backup regime. Hawk Wings has posted about many of them—BackityMac, Synk, applescripts, Dejà vu, although there are others.

UPDATE: As Steve points out in the comments, this app only backs up your preferences file and the essential files and folders in your ~/Library/Mail folder. If you want to back up any saved or modified attachments or your Address Book (which I think is part of any sensible Mail backup) you will need to find another method to include all the files needed for a full backup (listed in an earlier Hawk Wings post).

Email Backup is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .backup, apple mail, mail.app, entourage, files, schedule, better safe than sorry

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9 Responses to “A dedicated, easy-to-use backup app for Apple Mail and Entourage”

  1. Jason. says:

    And how does one recover from this backup? Copying files is only half the solution.

  2. Steve says:

    This program does not copy all the files you recommend to backup in this post:
    http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/09/26/backing-up-apple-mail/

  3. one digital life » Blog Archive » Email Backup says:

    [...] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your ownsite. [...]

  4. Tim says:

    Thanks, Steve. You’re quite right. I’ll amend the post.

  5. Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » Email Backup 1.1 add Thunderbird, Eudora support says:

    [...] Email Backup, a simple and easy-to-use email backup utility that I posted about just last week, has been updated, adding support for Thunderbird and Eudora. [...]

  6. matt says:

    What is the advantage of just backing up your mail, as opposed to simply including ~/Library/Mail in your regular backups with all your documents, photos, music, etc.?

  7. Tim says:

    For starters, including the Mail folder doesn’t backup everything that you will need in the event of catastrophe. See further:

    http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/09/26/backing-up-apple-mail/

  8. matt says:

    Fair enough, but the other stuff Mail needs is also in ~/Library, thus one can easily incorporate it into a regular backup regime. My setup is to use rsync (called from a daily cron job) backing up all of ~/Library, with an “excludes” file telling rsync to ignore the Caches directory, and maybe a few other directories comprising cached junk from web browsers. I definitely want to back up all of Preferences and Application Support, so all my programs are safe not just Mail.app. It just seems weird to tailor backups to a specific application. Better to back up too much, than too little.

  9. Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » Email Backup Pro: Simple email backup and restore says:

    [...] Maza Digital has re-released its Email Backup app as a shareware app called Email Backup Pro. [...]

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