Hi,
ok, this sounds strange and it might not be quite understandable as english isn’t my mothertongue.
I want to change my email address and my new provider doesn’t let me import my old email it…
I’m looking for an option to store/safe my mails in an app, doesn’t matter if on Android (K-9 Mail) or an Windows App.
I need it to look something up now and then…
Any suggestions?
Use Thunderbird on the PC. Connect your old account, move/copy the messages to the local folder. You can even move the messages to the new email provider if you also connect the new provider with Thunderbird.
I would definitely do large migrations like this on the PC.
K9 has option to download as many emails as you wish to Android, if you have time, storage, bandwidth, and your current email provider is OK with it.
K-9 is not meant to be used for long-term email storage. Don’t use it for that. You won’t be able to extract your emails. To store mails, use a PC. A PC also doesn’t get lost, broken, or stolen as often as a phone.
K9 has fetch options to 10000 or unlimited. You can set polling to never. Sounds perfect. Also, sync with Thunderbird should be a thing before long. K9 is Thunderbird on phone, or will be.
PCs or laptops or phones may be stolen in proportion to size, or approximate resale value, to a thief in a hurry in a home.
K-9 has no way to export old emails (and probably won’t get one in the near future). If you get a new phone and the messages are no longer on the server, you cannot migrate them. We actually get quite a few support requests about this over at the K-9 forum. So telling users to use K-9 for long-term storage (when messages are deleted from the server) is not a good idea 
Doing it on PC as suggested in other posts is the best way to do it. On Android you could use Termix and install some email fetching utility to achieve the same but keep in mind you need to backup the emails to some external media for archiving, whether you do it on a PC or Android/Termux
You’ve convinced me I should stop using K9 / K-9 mail. Thanks!
Nothing wrong with k9mail, just not the right tool for your special purpose. I happily use it.
Nothing wrong with k9mail,
Major flaws, from @ByteHamster:
I had incorrectly assumed if I downloaded all my emails with K-9 to phone, it would be a useful copy, in case something went wrong with my email provider. Now I learn there is no way to export those emails to migrate. Lock-in. Big mistake.
Also, the K9 acquisition into Mozilla/Thunderbird/Firefox seems to be moving away from unix philosophy of doing one thing well, towards a “non-profit” conglomerate trying to do many things.
I wouldn’t consider that flaws. K-9 wants to be your mobile companion to your desktop client. It does not want to be your only email client. That’s basically the design decision behind it since many years. If you use it for what it is made for, it works great. If you want to use K-9 as a backup solution, it’s not the right email app choice for you. Not being the right choice for you doesn’t make it a bad app 
Example? I can’t think of any “conglomerate” feature that was added in the last few years.
Desktop
Some people have desktops. Developers have desktops. Cubical slaves have corporate desktops. However, desktops are declining, and many people do not have desktops. Check out some statistics.
K-9 wants to be your mobile companion to your desktop client.
Did not see this anywhere else. Not in app description. Not at app website.
I see stuff like:
K-9 Mail is an open source email client focused on making it easy to chew through large volumes of email. (k9mail.app)
Full-featured email client
K-9 Mail is an open source email client that works with basically every email provider.(f-droid)
“conglomerate” feature
Mozilla is a foundation and a corporation. Locations around the world (Contacts, Spaces and Communities — Spaces — Mozilla note the google tag manager javascript). Then look at the long list of products, including… VPN. 
OK, thank you so much for all your thounghts…
In the end I will have a mail provider just for those both old email accounts to upload them to which will be a normal online provider…
Let’s call it a “Storage Provider”…
I will use my real new mail provider just for email from now on…
Cheers
Markus
Even as desktop user I would use some specialized program to backup my email. Google for imap fetch, imap download, imap sync, fetchmail and numerous others. Most of those should also work in termux.
Historically neither “fetching” nor “downloading” of the email was the job of an email client and separate programs did it… I think it should have stayed that way.
I wholeheartedly support the idea that every app should make it easy to export all user data it stores.
k9mail seems a bit undecided on this issue:
Choosing one of the many alternative options is a chore I have been slowly chipping away at. A reason many end up with easy gmail or other one button solutions.
github links
Microsoft proprietary github. Another reason to move away. 
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