How to Backup and Restore Mail

First, see opera:about to find out where all of Opera's folders are located.

To backup mail, while Opera is closed, you need to copy the following things to a safe place:

* The whole mail folder.

* Contacts.adr in the preferences folder.

* wand.dat in the preferences folder.

* opcert6.dat in the preferences folder if you have a master password set and have "use master password to protect saved passwords" set.

* These settings (if present) from operaprefs.ini in the preferences folder:

[User Prefs]
Mail View Mode=
Mail View List Splitter=
Preferred Mail Body Mode=
Auto Mail Panel Toggle=
Show Mail Error Dialog=
Error Console Filter=

[Windows]
Search Mail Dialog=
Mail Index Properties Dialog=
Mail Message Dialog=
Mail Authentication Failed Dialog=
Mail Panel Window=
Mail Window=
Mail Insert HTML Dialog=
Change Masterpassword Dialog=

[Security Prefs]
Password Lifetime=
Use Paranoid Mailpassword=

[Mail]
External Application=
Handler=
Webmail Service=
Default Mail Search Type=
Mail Database Consistency Check Time=

[Fonts]
EmailCompose=
HTMLCompose=
Titles=

[Columns]
Mail View=

You can backup the whole operaprefs.ini and use it to replace an existing one. Or, you'll have to edit those values in the existing operaprefs.ini.

Note that if you have IMAP accounts and want the IMAP cache to be complete, you need to set "make all messages available offline" for each IMAP account before you backup the mail folder. But, note that the IMAP cache is only a cache. If all the messages are removed from the IMAP server, the cache will be cleared if you access the the IMAP account with the backed up mail folder and all your messages in the backed up mail folder will be gone. See below for how to prevent your backed up messages from being wiped out for good in situations like this. And, see this page for how to re-upload messages to an IMAP server if needed.

To restore things, you just replace the exsiting files and folders in an Opera profile with *copies* of your backups. Never put your backups in use. Only put copies of your backups in use.

Now, since there's quite a bit you have to do to backup mail, you might as well just backup and restore everything.

Note: See <http://my.opera.com/operawiki/forums/topic.dml?id=1351732> for important notes about paths in accounts.ini when moving the mail folder to a new profile (on a new computer for example).