Export Thunderbird Emails to Text (TXT) with Attachments

Plain text is the most compact and universal format for email archiving. Every operating system can open TXT files without extra software. Total Thunderbird Converter Pro makes it easy to export Thunderbird emails to TXT while processing attachments automatically.

How to Convert Thunderbird to TXT

• Launch the program. It reads your Thunderbird profile and lists all mail folders.
• Browse to the right folder and select the emails to convert (or press Check All).
• Click the TXT icon in the toolbar.
• Set the output folder and file-name template (date, subject, sender, etc.).
• Choose which fields to export: sender, recipient, date, subject, body, headers, CC, BCC.
• Configure attachment handling in the Attachments tab. Text from attached documents is extracted and saved alongside the email.
• Press Start.

Each email produces a separate TXT file. Attached images are saved to a subfolder since TXT cannot embed graphics.

When TXT Is the Right Choice

Full-text search. TXT files are instantly searchable by Windows, macOS, and Linux built-in search tools. No special indexer required.

Minimal storage. Plain text takes far less disk space than PDF or DOC. Ideal for large mailboxes with tens of thousands of messages.

Data extraction. When you need just the raw content — sender, date, subject, body — without formatting, TXT is the cleanest option.

Selective field export. Include only the fields that matter: drop headers you do not need, keep the body and metadata, or export addresses only for a mailing list.

UTC date normalization. If your emails arrive from multiple time zones, the converter can unify all dates to UTC for a neat chronological order.

Total Thunderbird Converter Pro Customer Reviews 2026

"We extract plain text from journalist email archives for our NLP research. The Pro converter processes emails and text-based attachments together. Clean UTF-8 output works directly with our Python text analysis pipeline."

Andrew Black Data Scientist, BBC Research

"Regulatory requirement to maintain searchable text copies of all business correspondence. The Pro converter extracts text from emails and attached documents in batch. Command-line automation runs weekly on our archive server."

Elena Vasquez Records Manager, Telefonica Spain

"Engineering email threads with specification attachments need text versions for our search index. The converter extracts text from both emails and documents. Batch mode processes our monthly email archive efficiently."

Kenji Yoshida Systems Engineer, Honda R&D

FAQ: Exporting Thunderbird Email Text with Attachments ▼