How to Save/Export Messages

Opera can export messages in the standard mbox (.mbs extension with the "application/mime" mime type.) format.

The source of an mbox files looks just like the source of the message. It's also a lot like an .mht file and a lot like an .eml file. But, mbox files can contain more than one message with the start of each message designated by a line that starts with 'From " and a blank line between messages.

Mail clients like Sylpheed and Thunderbird (with the Import/Export Tools extension) also support the mbox format. Opera can import mbox files too. Opera even uses the mbox format to store your messages. And, they all should be able to detect mbs files attached to a message as embedded messages.

To save a single message as an mbs file, open the message and hit ctr + s or click "Menu -> page -> save as". Just make sure to type ".mbs" at the end of the filename in the save dialog or the file will be saved without an extension. (Mbox files don't usually have an extension, but the .mbs extension makes it easier to detect and handle them.)

In Opera, you can also right-click on any view and choose "export" to save all the messages shown in the view to a single mbs file.

If you need to only save certain messages to a single mbs file, create a label under the "Labels" access point in the mail panel, drag the messages to it and export the label.

For an mbs file that contains a single message, you can convert it (good enough at least) to an eml file by changing its extension, and by removing the "From " line (the first line, not the "From:" header line) from the message by using a text editor.

For my.opera.com community users, it's best to zip up the mbs file (Having the file zipped is importantfor the recipient if they use certain mail clients. Otherwise the mbs file will just show as an embedded message that they can't save to analyze.), goto mail.opera.com and send the zip file to the user(s) you want to look at the file. Or, if there's nothing private in the message, you can zip it up (or leave it as just an mbs file) and upload it to your my.opera.com file space and then paste a link to the file in the forum post. To get to your file space, at the top right of a my.opera.com page, click the wrench icon and goto files. Then, upload the file. After it's uploaded, an iframe will display your uploaded files. You can then right-click on the link to the file you want, copy link address and paste it in a forum/blog post.