How to Download AOL Online Mail to Your Hard Drive

By Tricia Goss

Saving email to the PFC on your hard drive makes it easy to find messages, even when your computer's offline.
i James Woodson/Digital Vision/Getty Images

AOL provides a feature called the Personal Filing Cabinet, which enables you to download and store important email messages on your hard drive. You can use it to create custom folders to organize your email, search for messages and read your downloaded mail even if your computer is not connected to the Internet. Alternatively, you can save a single message as an individual file on your computer using the File menu.

Save to PFC

Step 1

Log in to your AOL online account and click the "Mail" icon.

Step 2

Click on the email message you want to download. To download several messages, press and hold the "Ctrl" key and click on each message you want to download or press "Ctrl-A" to select all of your email messages.

Step 3

Click the "Save" drop-down arrow. Select "On My PC" and choose the folder to which you want to download the email.

Save as File

Step 1

Log in to your AOL online account and click the "Mail" icon. Click "Read" on the toolbar.

Step 2

Double-click the email you want to save to open it.

Step 3

Select the "File" menu and choose "Save" or "Save As." Click "Browse" to navigate to the location where you want to save the email, enter a name for the file and click "Save."

Step 4

Close the open email window. Repeat for any other messages you want to download.

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