Full backup

[Bland321]

I intend to delete all the emails (sent, received, everything) from my hotmail account, but not actually delete the account itself in case I still need it. I would like to continue to view these emails offline for my reference, in a way that is not synched up to my actual hotmail account at all (so deleting the contents of the hotmail account doesn't cause them to be deleted in the image, and viewing the image doesn't cause the emails to be re-added to my hotmail account). Basically, I would like to be able to view these emails as they appeared in my email account, but without any actual connection to the account.

Please can anyone advise if there is some way to achieve this using Thunderbird? Thanks in anticipation of replies.

[tanstaafl]

You could archive your hotmail mail in the "Local Folders" special account (which stores the messages on your hard disk). See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Archiving_your_e-mail for more details.