Downloading your emails

What it is#

Every email your business has sent and received is in your Mailbox. Export on the Mailbox page gives you all of it, whatever you are searching or filtering, in one of two forms:

Email files: a ZIP file holding your Inbox, Outbox, Drafts and Scheduled emails as four standard email files (Inbox.mbox, Outbox.mbox, Drafts.mbox and Scheduled.mbox). Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, Thunderbird and most other email apps can read them, and each file arrives as its own folder.
Excel list: every email as one row in a spreadsheet: folder, date, to, from, customer, type, subject, the full text, and whether it was delivered or bounced.

The ZIP file and the Excel file are locked with a password. The password is emailed to you the moment the file downloads.

When to use it#

Use Email files to keep every conversation with every customer in the email app you already use, or to hand a complete copy to a new owner or your accountant. Use Excel list to search, filter and share your emails as a spreadsheet.

How to do it#

Open the Mailbox and press Export, to the left of New email. On a phone it is under More.
Choose Email files or Excel list. The file downloads, and the password arrives in your email. A large Mailbox can take a while: the export then carries on in the background, appears in Download history on the Exports page when it is ready, and you get a notification.
Open the email with your password. Keep that email: RotaRound does not store the password and cannot send it again. If you lose it, export again for a new one.
For Email files, open the ZIP with the password and copy the four files out of it. They open without a password from then on.
In Apple Mail: choose File, Import Mailboxes, pick Files in mbox format, and choose the four files. Each arrives as a folder under Import.
In Thunderbird: add the ImportExportTools NG add-on, right-click a folder, choose ImportExportTools NG, Import mbox file, and choose the four files. Each arrives as a folder.
To move them into Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo, go through Thunderbird: add your Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo account to Thunderbird, then drag each imported folder onto that account. Thunderbird uploads the emails, and they appear in Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo on every device. Yahoo asks for an app password rather than your usual one: make one in your Yahoo account security settings and use it when Thunderbird asks.
For Excel list, open the Excel file with the password. To take the password off, in Excel choose File, Info, Protect Workbook, Encrypt with Password, and clear the box; on a Mac, File, Passwords.

What your customer sees#

Nothing. Downloading your emails sends nothing to anyone.

What happens next#

The export is kept in Download history on the Exports page. Download again builds it afresh with a new password, emailed to you. You can download your Mailbox three times a day. A press past that says Export limit reached for today. You can export again tomorrow.

Good to know#

A sent email is in the file exactly as it was sent, with its text and its design. A customer's reply is its plain text. A draft or scheduled email is its text, with the planned time noted.
Attachments are never kept, so none are in the files. If a customer sent you a file, their reply in the Mailbox says so.
The email files use the mbox form, which has been the standard for decades, so they will still open long after today's apps have changed.
If the account is ever paused or closing, Export my data in Settings holds the same four email files inside its ZIP.