tomfoolery is my hobby

"Assurance by Emma Lazarus

My first cotton tablet weaving project!

Not dunking on that person, it is certainly something you can do, it will indeed be better than leaving your emails exclusively online if you are using webmail (not the only kind of system !) and you will avoid the difficulties of digital preservation.

However ! I think it is useful to familiarize oneself with the basics of digital preservation, and I also believe that in an archival process it is usually better to keep digital documents in a digital format...

So what I would recommend instead, if you have an external hard drive or similar and feel ready to do a little bit of digital preservation, would be exporting your important emails* in a format with good interoperability (I would recommend EML, which should be an option in most webmail and clients), storing at least two copies of them (for example on your computer and on your external hard drive ; if you want to be really secure, a third support and copy would be great), checking the state of your copies sometimes (you can do that fast without even opening your files if you get their checksums) and copying them on a new support before the current one reaches its end...

I know this sounds more complicated than just printing your emails out (and it does require material resources not everyone will have), but preserving a bunch of printer paper is not necessarily easy either (and certainly less convenient for access ; you'll be able to search your email exports for what you want)...

(If anyone is interested and needs more explanations or help with any part of this process, I would be happy to try providing that !)