yeah, that external drive part is, or can be messy.

If you do not care if the emails are still available in Thunderbird, I would suggest exporting them in EML format using the import export tools add-on.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

While it offers other export formats, if you want the email to be treated by your computer as email and opened in a Thunderbird windows when you double click on them, EML is by far the best option.

I saved the add-on you suggested but when I open Add-ons from the tool menu I don't see any "options button next to the add-on search field", so I can't navigate to the download to install it. What should I do?

k9vet said

I saved the add-on you suggested but when I open Add-ons from the tool menu I don't see any "options button next to the add-on search field", so I can't navigate to the download to install it. What should I do?

Did you install it? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/installing-addon-thunderbird

the download is in my downloads folder but wont install when double clicked. Tried to follow the install steps but am confused.

I now have the import-export tool showing in Add-ons. So how do I use it to move some emails from my inbox to external drive?

Hi, Matt, I did move all the emails from one archive folder into a folder on my external HD. But if I want to look at those emails later, how do I access them as readable?

Scott

Browse to them in your file manager. Double-clicking on an eml file will open it in whatever program is associated with that file type, usually your default email client.

Here you will see two downsides of moving messages outside the email program. They are hard to search, and all logical connections between related messages are lost.