anyone here with indiatimes email account/how to backup imap email account?

F

filmguy

Disciple
i am one of the few unfortunate/dumb people who signed up for an indiatimes email account and till a few years back was using it as my primary email. but now its shutting down on 18th feb & i want to back up my older emails. i tried the methods prescribed on their site (Indiatimes Email FAQ) with both outlook 2007 & thunderbird
& have also emailed their support who gave other server addresses than the ones mentioned on their main site but they all say "server timed out" or "connection error". :annoyed:

has anyone here been through this process with them (i doubt m/any here have an account but still thought i'd ask) & have you succeeded in backing up?

or any suggestions for other alternate methods to backup/import my mails?

TIA
 
like said in my OP - i tried with outlook, thunderbird. even tried with gmail but it keeps saying server error.

contacting their support is useless. they answer after days and say try this & try that, none of which works
 
Thunderbird worked for me. Make sure you follow the instructions blindly. For example, the mistake I was making was that instead of copying imap.indiatimes.com I was using indiatimes.com (for IMAP) and it didn't work. I thought the option IMAP was already populated, which was not the case. Copy-paste whatever there in the FAQ and you should be all set. And do check the form field values in the example screenshots.

ayanavish i followed instructions to the T & set it to imap.indiatimes.com. also tried tilmb17.indiatimes.com which is what their support told me to try. which version of thunderbird did you use, coz i have the latest one & the screenshots in their faq's look like a different version.
Click to expand...

I took the last/latest one I could find: http://www.mozilla.org/en/thunderbird/all.html
 
thunderbird used to work quite well. now its giving error of server timed out since jan start. there is a work around for the server timeout. just make sure you exactly follow all steps mentioned in indiatimes help page for thunderbird. then after you subscribe to the inbox, or other folders you want, press ok.
Then File > Offline > Download/Sync now. It should download all messages in inbox at full speed. Might be around 60-80MB so do it at night or if you have unlimited connection do it when you can.

IF thunderbird does not work then try with Postbox. Its afree trial for 30 days. after trial is over it will nag to buy but it does not lock you out of the inbox. you cant send or receive mails though.
Settings for postbox is same as for thunderbird, since program is almost same as thunderbird. only problem using postbox is since its imap account you cannot export mails to thunderbird later if you want. it does not matter now since after 18th feb indiatimes will close down.
 
@ayanavish i followed instructions to the T & set it to imap.indiatimes.com. also tried tilmb17.indiatimes.com which is what their support told me to try. which version of thunderbird did you use, coz i have the latest one & the screenshots in their faq's look like a different version.

@6pack i did the File > Offline > Download/Sync now in thunderbird & also downloaded & tried Postbox but no go.


i'm on win 7 does that make any difference?


if i say "get mail" (in thunderbird) or "send/receive" (in outlook) it fetches few headers and then gives a server or network or timeout error. it doesnt download the whole mail though even though i've selected that option in the settings & gives an error when i try to fetch/download the individual mail


hitting my head here. am i the only one who's experiencing it coz their support is saying "functionality of your mailbox has been rigorously checked for any errors and it is now performing as desired" :annoyed: :angry:


also when did you guys back it up?
 
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i hope you have made a local archive folder on your computer. if you select all mails and select archive, they should download.
Just check these settings in thunderbird.

edit:
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try the indexing option in Postbox. it will say it needs to download all mails completely. usually, they download only headers and messages below few KB in size.
i downloaded the mails in november itself. took me around 4 days to get all mails. sometimes their server does not disconnect and other times it disconnects as soon as you login. probably their servers are at their limit now since everyone would be trying to download stuff.

If after turning on indexing in postbox, you still cannot get any messages in your inbox, then the only option is to select and forward individual mails to another online account from indiatimes.
 
6pack said:
i hope you have made a local archive folder on your computer. if you select all mails and select archive, they should download.
Just check these settings in thunderbird.



If after turning on indexing in postbox, you still cannot get any messages in your inbox, then the only option is to select and forward individual mails to another online account from indiatimes.
Click to expand...

thanks @6pack for your help

yeah, these settings are what i have in TB. also tried indexing in postbox but it remains stuck at "downloading 2 of 3865 messages screen".

at this point i've already spent 8+ hours trying to backup. i would've been better off going through my account & forwarding important mails individually (even though that would've required wading through 1000s of spam messages)

today the tech guy from indiatimes called me & did a team viewer session but even he couldnt fix it. he tried setting up his account in TB but couldnt even get TB to login (he was using the tilmb17.indiatimes.com server address which he said was better). funny thing is i can access my account without issue from browsers but he couldnt ping the tilmb17.indiatimes.com & imap.indiatimes.com servers when he tried to from command prompt. how is that possible? he then tried to access the server & setup TB with his account locally from his side & he claimed it was working properly there. they're in delhi, is it possible that mumbai is getting blocked or something? which city are you from 6pack? the fact that i cant even ping the servers means that no client will be able to back it up, right?
 
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i'm in mumbai too. there was some problem with thunderbird with the imap.indiatimes.com for 1-2 days but it's working properly now. see what error the activity manager says. for me indiatimes logs out every 1-2 minutes. if you keep the program open it will download those 3k+ messages in 2-3 hours since most messages not mot more than 200KB each i suppose.
 
just an update

after almost 15 + hours of trying when i was about to give up and forward emails individually i fortunately came across this Zimbra Desktop in a google search which luckily worked.

no thanks to indiatimes who just ceased communication. :bomb::mad: :mad:

lesson learnt, next time i aint being patriotic

once again thanks 6pack for your inputs
 
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