Download Emails from IMAP Server via IMAP Downloader & Free Way

  

Published By Jamie Kaler 

Approved By Rollins Duke

Published On September 11th, 2026

Reading Time 8 Min Read

Quick Answer: You can download emails from IMAP Server to Mac or Windows OS computer for backup & offline access by configuring your IMAP account in an email client like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird or via a dedicated IMAP downloader and exporting the data in MBOX, PST, EML, PDF and other formats.

Before we get started, it’s important to note that IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It’s a protocol used by email clients to access emails stored on a remote server.

IMAP is a secure protocol. This means that your emails are encrypted when they are sent and received. This ensures that your emails are kept safe and secure.

Therefore, IMAP is a great way to access your emails from multiple devices. It is also a secure protocol that ensures your emails are kept safe and secure. If you are looking for a way to access your emails from multiple devices, IMAP is a great option.

Why Is It Crucial to Download IMAP Emails?

Find the most common reasons to download emails from IMAP server:

• Download a copy of your emails to your computer.
• Letting you access some emails without being on the internet.
• Making it a little easier to store other important messages, just in case.
• Generally, freeing up some space on your mail server.
• This makes it easier to move emails to another device or account.
• Protecting your emails if your account is deleted or hacked.

How to Download Emails from IMAP Server? Quick Steps

1. Download, install, and run the IMAP Downloader tool on your computer.

   

2. Enter your email account credentials (username and password) and click on the “Login” button.
   

   [Please note that several accounts need additional settings to connect with applications. For example, Gmail requires you to enable 2-factor authentication and generate an app password to use instead of your original password in the software.

   

3. The IMAP Downloader software will add your IMAP folders among which you may select the particular folders you want to download emails from IMAP.

   

4. Select the file format to download emails from IMAP server.

   

5. Choose the Filter options – you can select name convention, date range, or export all email contents.

   

6. Browse to the desired location using the Change…. Button and hit the Backup button.

   

7. Click the “Backup” button to start the process to download emails from IMAP server.

   

8. Wait for the download process to complete. The time taken for the backup would depend on the size of your email content.

   

9. Once the process has finished, you can access your backup files from the destination folder you selected earlier.

   

Prime Features of the IMAP Email Downloader

Here are the benefits of using the software to download emails from IMAP server:

• Bulk download IMAP emails from multiple accounts to computer without any mailbox size restriction in a single run by uploading a CSV file of login credentials.
• 30+ output formats and clients, download IMAP emails in PDF, EML, EMLX, PST, MBOX, DOC, TXT, HTML, or migrate directly to Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo, or Office 365
• Download all Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Spam, Trash, and Custom folders from the IMAP server with attachments and preserved folder structure, including BCC, CC, To, From, Subject, formatting, images, and signatures exactly as they appear in the original emails.
• Automatically manages connection speed to avoid IMAP server rate limits, so large mailboxes download without getting throttled or blocked mid-process.
• Instead of downloading all IMAP emails to the computer from the mailbox – selectively filter and download by date range, sender, recipient, or subject.
• Scheduled backup – set up periodic download tasks for all your connected IMAP accounts, so that you do not have to launch the tool manually every time.
• Incremental backup – after the first full download, subsequent runs only download new or changed messages, rather than re-downloading the entire mailbox again.

How to Download Email from IMAP Server Manually?

Outlook is a powerful email client that allows users to access their emails from multiple accounts, including IMAP accounts. IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is a protocol used by email clients to retrieve emails from a server. This is a popular protocol used by many email providers, including Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.com.

First, let’s discuss how to download emails from IMAP server by configuring account in Outlook.

1. To do this, you will need to open Outlook and select the “File” tab.
2. From there, select “Account Settings” and then “Account Settings” again.
3. On the “E-mail” tab, select “New” and then “Manually configure server settings or additional server types”.
4. Select “Internet E-mail” and then enter your IMAP account information (every email provider has different settings).
5. Once you have entered your IMAP account information, select “More Settings” and then “Advanced”.
6. Click “OK,” then “Next,” and Outlook will begin syncing your IMAP folders automatically, no additional setting is required to start the download, since IMAP always keeps your mail synced with the server by design.

Now that you have configured your IMAP account in Outlook, you can begin downloading emails. To do this, select the “Send/Receive” tab and then “Send/Receive All Folders”. This will download emails from IMAP account to your Outlook account.

There are several benefits to using IMAP in Outlook. First, it allows you to access your emails from multiple devices. This means that you can access your emails from your laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Additionally, IMAP allows you to keep your emails synchronized across all devices. This means that any changes you make to your emails on one device will be reflected on all other devices.

Conclusion

Using IMAP in Outlook is a great way to access your emails from multiple devices. It also allows you to keep your emails synchronized across all devices. Additionally, you can use the RecoveryTools IMAP downloader to download emails from IMAP server to your computer. This will ensure that you have a backup of your emails in case something happens to your IMAP account.

We hope this blog post has been helpful in showing you how to download emails from the server to your computer.