hi everybody,

I have a question. I wish to backup everything in my email accounts (hotmail or yahoo) on my PC, like mail messages, select some attachments to store on my PC while others not, store contacts, i.e. COMPLETE BACKUP SOLUTION, but just backup, i.e. COPY, NOT CUT AND PASTE, NOR MOVE

If there isn't a tool to back all the upper stuff, okay, just a part of it, i've no problem with that, but the most important are the e-mail messages.

What is the tool to do so and how?

Please step in guys and provide me with some info about that.

If you had a POP3 email client which downloaded email to your PC, then
it's a simple matter of knowing which file/files to copy/backup -- I do it all the time.

Your Yahoo and Hotmail however, are web-based solution and copy/backup doesn't
work when initiated from your system with a target of the web-server.

You need to install a POP3 client on your PC, and then google for a plugin for
accessing your Yahoo / Hotmail accounts. Then you will just access the account(s)
and have a copy on both the web-based server and your PC

is outlook express a POP3 client?
i don't know what's the meaning of a POP3 client.

I just know that outlook is an email client that can be used to access emails, but rarely used it send mails.

Can it be used to do backups

You can try YahooPOPs to access Yahoo on you PC. See www.ypopsemail.com
For Hotmail, try Hotmail Popper. See www.boolean.ca/hotpop/

This is an interesting question.....I would like to do this for my work email. How could I back up email to my PC through the companies email? So is archiving basically the same thing? That's probably a dumb question right?

Sorry didnt mean to hijack the post.

yes

POP3: Post Office Protocol version 3 -- this is the receiving of email.
the sending side is SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

fine

back to square one: you wanted backups for YAHOO and HOSTMAIL.
these are NOT POP3 based solutions.
see klaw24 comments re: You can try YahooPOPs

As for email backups: using YahooPOPs, you can download web-based email
and thus have two copies, one on the web and another on your PC.

for a POP3 client, you already have one copy on the pc, so you only need
to copy the file(s) to a second location.

frankly, I use Allway Sync (review here) to export email to a second location -- just make sure your
email client is not running at the same time -- it can't copy an open file.

Archiving is specific to your email client -- I seem to recall that's a feature on
Notes or --- (I forget just now).
The issue (to me) would be, "Does Archiving delete the content archived?"
If so, then it's a poor backup solution; it's left you with still only one copy and
it's offline.

As to backing up company email -- if it's a pop3 client it is doable --
just find the correct files -- many times there's more than just one.