How to Export Your AOL Emails

Since it was one of the first major Internet service providers and email providers, millions of users all over the world have an AOL email address. If you are tired of logging into your AOL account to check your mail, there are a number of desktop email applications that let you export the emails from your email provider, such as AOL, and view them in the desktop application itself. If you have an AOL email account and you wish to export your AOL emails to a desktop email application such as Outlook or Thunderbird, you can do so in a few simple steps.

Open the computer's Web browser and navigate to the AOL Mail login page. Type your AOL email address and password in the spaces provided and click the "Sign In" button to sign into your AOL Mail account.

Click the "Settings" link, followed by the "IMAP and POP" option. Write down the information listed beneath the "IMAP Setup Information" heading, including your email address, IMAP user name, incoming mail server, SMTP outgoing server address, SMTP user name and SMTP password.

Double-click the desktop email application icon to launch the application. Click the "Add Account" button in the email application window to add a new account.

Enter the IMAP setup information you wrote down in step 2 into the spaces provided.

Follow the onscreen instructions to setup the IMAP account. This process can vary slightly, depending on the email application you are using, so see the help documentation that came with your program if you have any questions. Once the IMAP account setup process is finished, your AOL emails will be exported to your email application's server and can be viewed in the email application.