I’ve been comparing different ways to create a local copy of an IMAP mailbox. Outlook supports exporting selected mail folders to PST, which makes PST a practical choice if the backup will mainly be accessed through Outlook. But MBOX is also widely used for storing bulk email locally and can be useful when working across different mail clients.

That’s why I’d rather have a backup utility that gives me both options instead of locking the archive into one format.

MacSonik IMAP Backup Tool supports PST and MBOX along with PDF, EML, MSG, CSV, DOC, and DOCX. It also lets you preview the mailbox and select particular folders before starting the export. That seems useful when I only need part of a large account.

Another feature I’d want is a date filter. For example, if I’m archiving emails from a specific project or year, there’s little reason to download everything.

It also handles duplicate emails, provides an option to exclude attachments, and can save attachments separately as PDFs. For large PST output, it can split the file into smaller sizes while preserving the data.

For anyone who has done this before, which format has worked better for long-term IMAP archiving: PST, MBOX, or something else?

Visit- https://www.macsonik.com/imap-email-backup/