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Import and export

Move mail in from files or a server, and take copies out again.

What this is

Import and export move mail between Mailyte and files you hold yourself.

Export is how you take a copy — for an archive, a legal request, or simply because it is your mail and you should be able to hold it. Import is how you put mail in from an archive file or another server.

How it works

Importing works from a mail server over IMAP or POP3, or from files you already have — EML files being the individual-message format most systems export. You choose which mailbox receives it.

Exporting works either from one mailbox or from every mailbox on a domain, and produces one of three formats:

  • EML — one file per message. Readable by almost anything.
  • MBOX — one file holding a whole folder. What Thunderbird and most Unix tools expect.
  • ZIP — the above, compressed, which is what you want for anything large.

You can choose whether to include attachments and whether to keep the original folder structure. Both matter more than they sound: attachments are usually most of the size, and a flattened archive is painful to search later.

Every operation is queued rather than run while you wait, and appears in the history with a status — Pending, Processing, Completed, Failed or Cancelled. Large exports take a while, and the page does not need to stay open.

Set it up

To export

  1. Go to Import & export and start an export.
  2. Choose one email account, or a whole domain.
  3. Pick a format. Choose ZIP unless something at the other end specifically wants EML or MBOX.
  4. Decide on attachments and folder structure. For an archive you may need to keep later, include both.
  5. Start it, and collect the file from the history once the status reaches Completed.

To import

  1. Start an import and choose the source: a mail server, or files you hold.
  2. For a server, enter its address and the mailbox credentials. For files, upload the archive.
  3. Choose the target mailbox. Mail lands there, so pick carefully — an import into the wrong mailbox is tedious to unpick.
  4. Start it and watch the history for the result.

When something is wrong

The export has not appeared. It queues. Check the history for its status rather than your downloads folder; a domain-wide export of a busy year takes real time.

The export failed. Try a narrower range — one mailbox rather than the whole domain — which both isolates the cause and usually succeeds.

Imported mail is in the wrong place. Check which target mailbox the job used. Folder structure is preserved only when that option was set before the job ran.

You are moving from another provider entirely. Use Migrating mail in instead. It is built for that and handles the whole mailbox.

You need this for a legal or compliance request. Export the specific mailbox with attachments included, and keep the generated file — the history records when it was produced.