Export AOL Mail to Hard Drive with Best Tricks Listed for 2019

 

If you are in need to export AOL mail to hard drive, sit down and read the article. The article lists top techniques to migrate AOL emails to PST and other formats on local hard drive.

AOL mail is a commercial email client started for Americans. The mail is expanded to America Online Mail. This mail client got promoted throughout the globe and is now being used in many countries and regions. AOL mail started in online and afterward started off AOL mail version for desktop. AOL Desktop Gold is the latest version in service for desktop AOL mail users. There are different mechanism for downloading AOL mail data from Web mail and desktop mail applications.

AOL webmail does not offer a direct method to export AOL mail on local system. Whereas AOL Desktop offers a PFC file in the local hard drive. This file can be copied to another location and can be used on further whenever required. Lets get to the methods that export AOL mail to PST file in local hard drive.

Best Techniques to Migrate AOL Mail Data to Computer

There are multiple formats for downloading AOL mail to hard drive. But many methods come under a single phase mechanism, named as AOL Mail configuration. In this AOL mail is configured into another email client, say, Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, Zoho mail, etc. that offer a direct email download option. After the email client is configure on the resultant email client, then easily save the AOL mail on local system. In the next phase mechanism, you directly backup the AOL mail data to computer in multiple formats, just downloading and running the application on your system.

We will go through each solution one by one. Let us start with the AOL mail configuration into Microsoft Outlook.

Export AOL Email to Outlook PST File

For this operation to accomplish successfully, you need to install MS Outlook and configure an Outlook account in it. With this completed get down and follow the steps displayed below:

1. Firstly, Launch Windows Microsoft Outlook application on your system.
2. Click on File menu and select the Add account option.
3. In the appeared window, check for Manual setup or additional server types option. Click on Next button.
4. Choose POP or IMAP radio button. Click on Next to proceed.
5. Here, you have to enter account and server configuration details
   
   • Enter First and Last name
   • Select the Account type to POP (or IMAP for retaining emails in AOL Mail)
   • Enter pop.aol.com (or imap.aol.com) beside Incoming Server
   • Enter smtp.aol.com beside Outgoing Server
   • Provide AOL user Credentials
6. Click on More settings.
   • Switch to Outgoing server tab:
     1. Check for “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication” option.
     2. Then choose “Use same settings as my incoming mail server” option.
   • Then, move to Advanced tab
     1. Enter 995 (POP), 993 (IMAP) beside Incoming server & select SSL Encryption
     2. Enter 465 beside Outgoing Server and select SSL Encryption
7. Close the active window and click on Next option for account verification.
8. After successful account verification, close the active Window and click on Finish button.
9. Close the Configuration window and Restart Microsoft Outlook.

This will add AOL mail on Outlook application. Now, use the inbuilt Export option to save the AOL mail in PST format on premise computer hard drive separately.

Export AOL Mail to Thunderbird File Format

Install Mozilla Thunderbird and create a Thunderbird account in it. Once, that done, move down and follow the steps below

1. Open Mozilla Thunderbird application on your system.
2. Click on Tools menu. Come down and select the Account settings option.
3. Click on Account Actions and choose Add Mail Account option.
4. In the appeared Window, type Your Name, AOL Email Address, and Password.
5. Click on Continue. This will start the configuration process.
6. Choose IMAP (remote folders) option. Click on Done button to finish the process.
7. To manually set the server configuration, Click on Manual Config option
8. Under the server hostname, check the following:
   
   1. Incoming: imap.aol.com / Port: 993 (SSL/TLS)
   2. Outgoing: smtp.aol.com / Port: 465(SSL/TLS)
9. Select the Retest option. This will check if the configuration is correct or not.
10. Click on Done button. This will add AOL mail on Thunderbird application.

You can use the Export option in Thunderbird to export all AOL mailbox to local hard drive in MBOX format. Or else, drag and drop each email to save them in EML format.

The above shown two methods were done on offline application and now we are moving to the methods done on Webmail apps. Let us start knowning how AOL mail is downloaded to local hard drive using Gmail application.

Export AOL Mail to Gmail MBOX

1. Sign in to your Gmail account.
2. Select the Settings gear in Gmail. Then select the Settings option.
3. Move to the Accounts and Import tab.
4. In Import Contacts and mails section, select Import mail and contacts option.
5. A new window comes out on the screen. Enter your AOL email address under What account do you want to import from? Then click on Continue option.
6. Click Continue button. This will take you to AOL mail account login page.
7. Login to your AOL mail providing the email ID and password.
8. Click on Agree option to grant access to ShuttleCloud to perform mail migration (AOL to Gmail). Close the window.
9. Click on Start Import option. This will initiate the import process. After Process completion to click OK button.

This will bring the AOL mail to Gmail account. Gmail provides a feature to download Gmail data on local hard drive. The process is popularized as Google Takeout. You need to perform the process and save the AOL mail data in computer in MBOX format.

1. You can search Google takeout on browser and select the first link. It will redirect you to the Gmail login page (if not signed in). Login to your Gmail account.
2. Select the Gmail data to be downloaded. Check / uncheck the mailbox items for downloading to hard drive.
3. Scroll down and select Next option
4. Choose Export type as One time archive
5. Select the File type (zip, tgz) and size of the file (split file option)
6. Click on create archive option

This will initiate the backup process. Once a the download archive is ready, Gmail will send a link to your Inbox. Download the archive file from the email. This will download AOL mail to hard drive in MBOX format.

Now we move on to the next email client that offer to download email client, Zoho Mail.

Export AOL Mail to Zoho Mail (EML File Download)

1. Login to Zoho Mail.
2. Click on Settings Gear.
3. Under Mail accounts section, click on Add POP3 account option.
4. In General section, enter your AOL email address, Account name, Reply-to email address. Click on Next option.
5. In the Incoming section, under Server Confguration, enter pop.aol.com with 995 as the Port number. Also, enter the AOL account password. Click the Next option.
6. For Outgoing section, enter smtp.aol.com for Host and 465 as the port number. Select SSL encryption option.
7. Check for Authentication option. Then select option “Use same as incoming credentials”.
8. Click on Add account option.

This will add the AOL mail to Zoho mail account. Afterward use the Zoho mail Export option to export AOL mail to hard drive. This will download the data in EML file format.

There are many other email clients that offer an export / download email option. You can add the AOL mail on them as well to download your data on the computer system. Now, we move and see how we can get AOL mail data from AOL Desktop.

Save Data from AOL Desktop in PFC Format

1. Sign in to AOL Desktop Gold.
2. Click on the Settings icon.
3. Move to the General settings and click on My Data tab.
4. Click the Export option.
5. Select the file in AOL mail to export.
6. Create a password to export the data in PFC format.

The data is the PFC file is secured, thus requires a password to open and access the PFC data. When the PFC file is imported, the password is to be entered. The authentication will grant access to the file data access in AOL Desktop.

Wrapping It All Together!!

In the article above, we have shared some important steps taken to export AOL mail to hard drive. There are multiple email configuration described with steps so that user can select the easiest way to download AOL emails on computer system without data loss.