Windows Live Mail stores your messages, but where Here's how to find them
If you don't know where your important files are, you can't be sure you're backing them up. And if they're not backed up, you can lose them.
And not knowing an important file's location isn't just about backup. If your files disappear, it's easier to recover them if you know where to look.
This isn't much of a problem for your documents and photos. When you create a file, you decide what folder it goes into. But it's not so obvious with a local mail client program such as Microsoft's Windows Live Mail (part of the Windows Essential collection of free programs). These programs tend to make their own decisions about where to keep your files, and figure (wrongly) that you don't really need to know.
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If you use Live Mail, chances are that your emails are in C:\Users\yourlogonname\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail, where yourlogonname is the name with which you log into Windows.
But that's a might, not a definite. If that doesn't pan out, follow these instructions to find the real location:
The location will appear in a dialog box. You can copy and paste the path into the Start menu's search field or the Windows 8 Search charm.
You can also click the Change button and move the folder to another location--perhaps somewhere in your documents folder.
And what will you find in that folder Other folders, representing the folders inside the Live Mail application that you use to organize your mail. Within those folders you'll find your mail in large collections of EML files.