Verify Your Email Archive

[This part 3 of a multi-part series – start here.]

Before we purge our online email history, we should make sure we have a complete archive.

Trust, but Verify

In the last article, we started downloading all of our historical emails from Google (Gmail), Yahoo and/or Microsoft (Outlook). If you had years of emails, this process can take several days to complete. If you have a slow or intermittent email connection, it could take even longer. We want to verify that all the emails have been properly and completely downloaded before we cut off the archiving process – and definitely before we delete the originals from the cloud.

Note that your “single source of truth” for comparing against your Thunderbird archive should be the web view. Your phone or computer email app may not show everything consistently. Compare against the web interface from Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook whenever possible.. Use these links:

• Outlook
• Gmail
• Yahoo Mail

Here are several specific things you can do to check the completeness of your email archive.

1. Click the top ‘folder’ at the left side in Thunderbird – the one for your entire account (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook). You should see a count of all the emails. You can check this against the total count online.
2. Check for recent activity in Thunderbird – go to Tools menu, then Activity Monitor. Make sure there are no tasks still running that are downloading emails. If there are, you need to let them complete.
   • Note that you may see some errors in the activity list. Review them for anything obvious, like a bad password or something. If you have more errors that don’t make sense, try doing a web search for “Thunderbird import” and some key text from the error message to see if you can determine the problem. You might also try asking an AI chatbot. AI tools can help interpret error messages, but double check suggestions before changing settings. I like Lumo for private stuff.
3. Check some key emails
   • Find the oldest email in Thunderbird – does it match the web version of your account?
   • Check recent emails, as well – both ends of the spectrum.
   • Check the oldest emails in a couple key folders, too (e.g., Sent).
4. Search for memorable/important messages. Search for key people and types of emails, just spot check. This might include:
   • Travel confirmations
   • Important purchases
   • Password resets
   • Shared photos
   • Tax docs
5. Try opening some attachments. You should see an icon like a paperclip on emails with attachments. Find some samples and open the attachments. This might include:
   • PDF files
   • Photos
   • Documents

Note that opening an email or attachment should not trigger a fresh download from your provider. If you see this, double check the settings from the previous article. You want to have full copies of all your emails, not just the headers or placeholders.

Bonus: Proton’s Easy Switch

Proton Mail has a very handy tool for switching from Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook called Easy Switch. It basically does what we did in the last article, but in the cloud. Proton stores your email using end-to-end and zero-access encryption so Proton generally cannot read stored mailbox contents. (Though, of course, the email recipient can still read it and it’s probably not encrypted on their email provider’s server, unless they use a service like Proton.)

This would also give you a cloud-based, secure, and private copy of your entire email archive that you can access and search from anywhere. But I wouldn’t let this be your main archive. This is a “nice to have” bonus copy. And if you have a lot of old emails, you’re going to need to sign up for a paid Proton account. If you know someone who already has a Proton paid account, ask them for a referral link – you’ll both get a bonus. (If you don’t know anyone else who uses Proton, you can use my referral link.)

If you haven’t tried Proton recently, you really should give it a look. They have email, contacts, calendar, docs, sheets, password manager, VPN, 2FA app and more.

See Proton’s Easy Switch instructions here.

Next Step

In the final article in this series, I’ll show you how to make backups of your email archive and (optionally) delete the online copies.