Backing up your email

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If you'd like a personal local copy of your NATCA email — to reduce storage space requirements, to keep historical mail offline, or before any major change — this page walks through how to do it from the most common mail apps.

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Why back up

Your NATCA Email mailbox is backed up on our end — so a backup isn't required. But there are good reasons to keep a personal copy:

Rackspace retirement: When your @natca.net account is retired, mail that hasn't been migrated won't transfer automatically. Download anything important before cutover.
NATCA Mail Archive: Older mail moved off your main mailbox is stored on the archive server, but only for 6 months after your account is closed — after that it's permanently deleted.
Leaving NATCA: Once your membership ends, your @natca.org account will eventually be deactivated. Back up anything you want to keep before that happens.
Peace of mind: A local copy is yours regardless of what happens to the server.

A local backup is a read-only snapshot. It won't sync new mail after the export, and it won't help you send or receive. It's an offline record, not a second mailbox.

Apple Mail (macOS)

Outlook for Windows — PST export

Outlook for Mac — OLM export

Gmail as an IMAP client

Thunderbird — free, all platforms

MailStore Home — free, Windows only

Contacts & calendarsnNATCA Email keeps your contacts and calendars on the server (using CalDAV and CardDAV), so they stay in sync across your devices. If you'd like a local copy, you have two options:n- Export from webmail. In NATCA Email webmail at mail.natca.org, export your contacts as a vCard (.vcf) file and your calendars as an iCalendar (.ics) file, then save them somewhere safe.n- Connect a desktop app. Point a calendar or contacts app at NATCA Email webmail's calendar/contacts (CalDAV/CardDAV) address — `https://mail.natca.org/SOGo/dav/` — signing in with your NATCA Email address and an app password (generated at email.natca.org under My Email → App Passwords). Your app keeps a local copy and stays in sync while connected.