Best way to save emails (and attachments) from an IMAP account

[RastaManBob]

Hi,

I am coming to the end of my University studies and would like to archive all of my emails. I do not have a huge amount but none the less I'm hoping it would be possible to do this simply.

I normally just access my email using Outlook Web Access however the account can be accessed using IMAP. I thought this should be the best way - Set the account up in Thunderbird (or similar?) and find a way to save all emails (.html / .txt / etc hopefully, I'd like to email .eml) and attachments.

I tried this for a short while last night using Thunderbird and the add-on Attachment Extractor. Whilst this appeared to be ideal, oddly some emails were saved with a size of 0 bytes and contained nothing (obviously).

Can anybody suggest an alternative to this? Certainly there are a couple of emails, relating to forthcoming employment, that are crucial I backup before the University close the account.

Thank you.

 

[RastaManBob]

From either of these methods is it easy to (in batch) simply save as a html or txt file? The method mentioned in my first post worked well other than a few files (and as I cannot spare the time/cannot be bothered [delete as appropriate ]) I don't feel I can trust that method.

I'd ideally like the files to be in a format I can view in any text editor or web browser. I cannot see that I'll ever need the files but I'd like them incase.

The suggestions so far sound good but seem as though they'd be creating a local copy only... This isn't a problem however I'd like the emails (and attachments) as files.

Thanks.