Email account export/backup, recovery and retry emails


Posted by Nishi on 21 January 2025


The Zoho Mail Admin Console provide options to export or backup users' emails, recover any deleted emails and also retry sending of emails that have failed delivery. These options are available in the Admin console's mail settings menu.

Email Export

The super administrators or administrators can export the email accounts of their organization users either to comply with backup policies or to backup an account before an employee leaves the organization. In certain cases, when the mail account's storage gets utilized, the admins can backup emails from that account based on a specific period of time before deleting older emails to free up space in that account. 

The Email Account export can be done for entire accounts or based on a specific period of time. The exported emails will be available in ZIP/PST format in the Admin Console for a period of 30 days from the date of export.   

Export email accounts - Administrators:

The entire account is generally exported when an employee leaves the organization, and the administrator has to backup the account before deleting the account or clearing the emails. The exported ZIP/PST files will have the exact folder structure that was available in the user account. 

Only the emails that are available in that account at the time of export will be exported. The emails in the Spam/ Trash will not be included in the backup. 

  1. Login to the Zoho Mail Admin Console.
  2. Go to the Mail Settings menu, and select Export Mail Account.
  3. Click Schedule New Export when you are scheduling exports for the first time. If not Click Add.
  4. You can choose to export the data of a single user or multiple users in either of the two ways given below.Select Search and Select user and click Select Users to add the user(s) you want to export the data to. OrSelect Add users via CSV and click Choose File to upload the list of users in a CSV file.
  5. Now, choose if you want to export the entire account, or emails that fall in a specific time period.Select Entire Account from the 'Export mails from' option if you want all of the user's emails to be exported.Select Specific Period, and enter the time period for period-based export. All the emails that were sent or received during this time period will be exported as a ZIP file.Select Export archive email(s) alone option if you want only the archived emails of the selected user(s) to be exported.
  6. Select the Use Encryption checkbox if you'd like to password-protect the ZIP file containing the exported emails, and enter the password for the file. This is an optional step and you can leave this checkbox unselected if you do not want password protection for your files.
  7. Choose whether you want to export the data as a ZIP file or a PST file under the Export as option.The option to export data in PST format has been rolled out in a phased manner and will be available only to the organization users who have availed of one of our paid plans.If you want the option enabled to your organization account, please reach out to us at support@zohomail.com
  8. Finally, Click on Export to export the data of the selected user(s).
  9. Once you add the export, you will be taken to a listing where all the scheduled exports will be listed. You can check the status of any export here.
  10. Once the export process is completed, you will see a download link in the Status. 
  11. Click the download link to view the list of files available for download for each account.
  12. An email notification will also be sent to the admin and the user, with the links to download the available files.
  13. The exported files will be available only for 30 days from the date of export. 

Note:

  • Ensure that you download the ZIP/PST files from the Admin Console, before deleting the account. The exported data will be available for 30 days from the date of export. It is always advisable to download the exported file before deleting the account to avoid data loss.
  • A maximum of only 50 users can be exported at once in the ZIP file format. Similarly, you can only export a maximum of 10 users at a time in the PST file format.

Folder-specific export - User Backup:

Users can log in to their own accounts at mail.zoho.in to export emails in a particular folder or a set of folders. The options to export the emails in their account are available under the Import/ Export section in the Settings. However, the administrator can restrict the email export by specific users using the Access Restrictions section of Email Policy

Backup via Email Forwarding

You can use Incoming Email Forwarding and Outgoing Email Forwarding to save a copy of the email that arrives to the account and the emails that are sent from the account. You need to create two user accounts in your organization exclusively for this purpose. Ex: backup.in@yourdomain.com and backup.out@yourdomain.com. 

You can forward all incoming emails to the backup.in account by configuring Email Forwarding from the Admin Console. 

The outgoing forward is mainly based on the outgoing forward policy. You can create an outgoing forward policy and configure backup.out@yourdomain.com as the account to be used to maintain a copy of outbound emails. Then you need to apply the policy to the users, for whom you want to have a backup of the outbound emails. Refer here for detailed information about the Email Policy. 

When you configure multiple accounts to be forwarded to a single account, make sure that the 'Backup' accounts have sufficient storage to handle the volume of emails. 

Email Recovery

The email recovery option lets you recover emails that have previously been deleted by users from their respective email accounts. This feature is especially useful in cases where an employee has left the company, and the emails have been deleted by them, but they need to be viewed for some reason by the org admin. The admin can choose to recover all the deleted emails for a selected employee, in the specified period. Follow the steps below to recover the required emails:

  1. Login to the Zoho Mail Admin Console.
  2. Go to the Security & Compliance menu, and select Deleted Email Recovery.
  3. Click Add Recovery
  4. Click Select Users and choose the single or multiple users whose emails you'd like to recover.
  5. In the Select recovery duration dropdown, choose the time period within which emails need to be recovered from the specified accounts.
  6. In the Recovery destination folder option, Select the Same folder if the emails need to be recovered to the folder(s) in which they were previously present.Select New folder if they need to be recovered to a new folder, and enter a name for this folder.
  7. Select the Recover deleted spam folder emails also checkbox if you want spam emails that were received in the specified duration to be recovered too.
  8. Now, click Add Recovery.
  9. Once you schedule the recovery, you will be taken to a listing where all the scheduled recoveries will be listed. You can check the status of any email recovery here.
  10. Click the Recover deleted emails option.

Email recovery is applicable to both the received and sent emails. The status of completion, the size of recovered emails and other such details can be viewed in the email recovery listing. You can also use the Filter option provided to view email recoveries based on the completion status.

Retry Mails

When emails are sent from your account, in case the recipient server does not accept the emails due to temporary errors, such emails will be moved to Retry queues. The emails will not be bounced back to senders for temporary errors (451.x.x). The mails sent from the domain to external mail servers may sometimes be bounced due to some temporary errors in the recipient servers. Such emails will not be bounced to senders but will queue up in the Retry Mail list. The sender will receive an email with the reason, after 4 hours. 

"Message sending has temporarily failed and would be tried for another x days. Message will be permanently failed if all the attempts are unsuccessful."

The emails will be automatically tried at a predefined interval automatically.

The administrator can view such emails in the retry queue, validate the headers and also remove the retries if required. The list will have the information of the sender, recipient, Last retry time, Reason for delivery delay and also header information. The administrator can manually retry sending by selecting the messages and using the Retry option.

The option is useful when emails to a particular valid domain get bounced due to a temporary server issue at the recipient end. In such a case, the administrator can select all the emails addressed to that domain and Select Retry Sending, which would avoid emails bounced back to the senders.

  1. Login to the Zoho Mail Admin Console.
  2. Go to the Mail Settings menu, and select Retry Emails.
  3. All the emails that are awaiting retry will be listed here, along with the recipient address, last retry time, pending retries, and the reason for failure.
  4. Click on any email in the listing to view the email's headers.
  5. Select the emails in the retry queue on which you'd like to perform an action.
  6. You can choose to either Send or Delete the emails. 

Was this article helpful?

Subscribe now & Get the latest updates

Index / Admin Guide

Zoho Mail provides extensive control panel for the administrators to manage their organization users, email accounts and policies.

Email hosting setup

Zoho Mail Suite provides enterprise features for email hosting to satisfy the needs of organizations of all types and sizes. Zoho Mail provides custom domain-based email address for all members of your organization in no time.

Troubleshooting Domain Verification

When you register the domain with one provider, but point the Nameservers to another provider, then the CNAME/ TXT/ MX/ SPF records added in your Domain Registrar is not considered valid.

Zoho Mail plugin for cPanel

cPanel provides a control panel for domain owners to manage the different aspects of web hosting. Zoho Mail Plugin for cPanel helps you sign up for email hosting with Zoho Mail from within cPanel. This plugin is available under the Email section.

Zoho Mail for Plesk

Plesk is a web hosting platform with a control panel that allows domain owners to manage the different aspects of web hosting. Zoho Mail Plugin for Plesk helps you sign up for email hosting with Zoho Mail from within Plesk. 

Searching Admin Console

Zoho Mail Admin Console provides a centralized interface from where you can manage critical aspects of an organization - the different domains, users, groups, organizational spam control, email policies, to name a few. However, this wealth of information might make navigating through the Admin Console slightly challenging.

Dashboard

The Admin Console Dashboard is the first thing you will see as soon as you login to the Zoho Mail Admin Console. It is a culmination of important data your admin might need at their disposal. You can enable or disable widgets in your dashboard including data on your organization's Email Traffic Stats.

Users

The user details section, provides the list of users already added to the organization. When you click on each user, you can have a detailed view about the particular user. The Admin can also perform a set of actions on the user. The primary email address of the users are listed in the section.

Roles and Privileges

The roles available in Zoho Mail are Super Administrator, Administrator, and User roles. The members of the organizations can assume different roles in Zoho Mail, based on the requirement. The Super Administrator can provide Administrator privileges to other users.

Groups

Groups or Distribution Lists are common email addresses, shared by a set of users for a specific purpose. When an email is sent to the group account, a copy of the email gets delivered to the mailbox of all the members of the Group.

Organization Settings

The administrator can control organization-wide parameters under the Organization section. Settings for the entire organization such as the org name, logo, templates for the welcome email and signature, format for the display name and email address.

Domain Options

Zoho Mail allows organizations to add domains to their organization accounts or even buy domains through Zoho. Your organization members will further be able to send and receive emails using their custom domain-based email addresses in Zoho.

Autodiscovery Settings

The Autodiscovery service ensures that email accounts can easily be configured using the IMAP protocol or on mobile devices using ActiveSync. The procedure varies depending on whether you want to configure it for IMAP or ActiveSync.

Email Policies/ Rules

Email Policies help the administrators control the organization's email sending and receiving parameters. In Zoho Mail, you can define multiple email policies and apply them to various sets of users and groups. 

Advanced Delivery Options

With Zoho Mail, you can redirect or send a copy of an email automatically by configuring Email Routing. Email Routing is helpful in many situations like if you want to automatically send a copy of one user's email to another. 

Security and Compliance Dashboard

The security and compliance dashboard in the Zoho Mail Admin console provides an overview of all the recommended security configurations. It displays the overall compliance score.

Organization Security

Organization accounts hold a lot of sensitive data and there's a need for certain security rules to make sure your data stays safe and is not compromised. The administrator can protect their user and organization data with the help of email security features.

Organization Spam Control

Zoho Mail is a secure email service with a spam control system that provides multiple options to customize the settings such that they suit your organization's needs. 

Zoho Mail Outlook Add-in

Zoho Mail users can now experience enhanced email security and have better control over their preferences with the new Outlook Add-in while using their email client. 

Export User Accounts

The Zoho Mail Admin Console provide options to export or backup users' emails, recover any deleted emails and also retry sending of emails that have failed delivery. 

Data Subject Requests

Organizations deal with an enormous amount of confidential data on a daily basis. So, organizations might receive data subject requests to check for some legal or compliance issues.  

Migration to Zoho Mail

Zoho Mail offers a very simple solution to migrate data from your previous email provider to the respective user accounts in Zoho Mail directly. These user accounts need to be created in Zoho Mail before adding the migration. 

Zoho Exchange Migration Wizard

Zoho user and email migration wizard can be used to discover users and migrate their emails from the Active Directory/ Exchange environment to their accounts in their Zoho Mail organization accounts. 

Application Settings

The administrator can control the settings for other Zoho apps and third-party applications and integrations from the Other App Settings section in the Zoho Mail Admin Console.

Email Retention and eDiscovery

Email retention is the process of retaining emails in an organization for a specific period in an organized manner based on the policies of the organization. 

Email Backup and Recovery

Email backup processes and stores emails in a safe, centralized location that can be retrieved at any point in time. It helps prevent data loss by enabling users to restore email content that has been accidentally deleted or lost.

Reports & Statistics

Zoho Mail has a separate Admin Reports section which comprises of statistics on various aspects of your organization's emailing experience. As an administrator, these reports will help you gain information on all aspects of your organization.

Zoho Toolkit

Zoho Mail provides easy-to-use diagnostic tools to troubleshoot some services. There are options to check the domain and registry details. You can run some basic DNS configuration checks for a specific domain, and analyze message headers.

Subscription

Zoho Mail offers different plans to accommodate different users. One can choose the subscription that would suit their organization from the array of available plans. You can also opt for the mix and match plan to have a tailor-made subscription.

Firewall settings

Configure your firewall settings and allow your organization members to access Zoho Mail without any restrictions. All of the below-mentioned domains have to be whitelisted even if you don't see activity at those addresses.

Have a query or want to discuss ?

Email:

sales@fgrade.com

Call us:

+917569743290