Saving emails

[silkie]

Is it possible to find the file size of multiple emails and other files before copying to a usb flash drive?  I am going to upgrade my OS from Vista to the latest Windows and I need some advice about transferring stuff I want to keep, and this seems to be the simplest option - at the moment I have an 8GB Sandisk and some CD-R discs.  Any comments and/or links will be appreciated.

[DaveLembke]

What e-mail client are you using or is it just web based through ISP etc?

I use Thunderbird for my e-mail. It allows me to migrate from system to system and my e-mail comes with me. Its a manual process that I use where I copy the entire Thunderbird data from my profile to a USB stick. Then I install Thunderbird to new computer and then dont configure it, just exit after install is complete. Then insert USB stick and copy the Thunderbird contents to my profile on my new computer and then launch Thunderbird. All my e-mail is there ard the passwords for authentication and all transfers over.

Curious why file size of e-mails before copying to USB stick would be so critical. Your USB stick should be plenty large in capacity to take some e-mails with attachments that are limited in size to usually around 25mb or less.

Thunderbird is a product of Mozilla and is like Outlook, but FREE

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

[silkie]

AOL was the first ISP that I had and I signed up then for their email service - been all ok since, but I can't find if they have a process to transfer the present contents of my account to another PC or OS - I think when I changed my PC last I just started afresh.  My idea is to have a copy of various items - Picasa photos, documents, etc, in case things go wrong!
My concern with file size was prompted by my transferring some photos to a CD (trial run) and running out of space, and I thought it would be useful to know how much I needed.  Anyway, I'll copy what I can and sort things out after the upgrade.
Thanks for interest and reply.

[DaveLembke]

Another option you could use is Cloud Storage such as Google Drive which gives 15GB of free storage. Any system you connect to Google Drive with would have the contents and no having to worry about burning discs etc.  https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375123?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en