How to Extract Email Addresses From Opera Mail
In short: To extract email addresses from Opera Mail, copy them from the Contacts view, open the contacts.adr file in the Opera Mail profile folder or run an email address extractor that pulls every address from your inbox, sent and message bodies in bulk. Opera Mail has been unsupported since 2016, so saving your list now is worth it.
Why extract your addresses now
Opera Mail was a capable email client, but Opera stopped developing it in 2016. It still runs, yet it gets no updates and no security fixes, so an old install can break or corrupt at any time. Your contacts, plus every address you have ever emailed, sit inside that client. Pulling them out gives you a clean list for a new email app, a mailing list or simple safekeeping. The snag is that Opera Mail never had a proper export-all feature, which is why the routes below matter.
Senior Analyst, Corbett Software
“Opera Mail stopped getting updates back in 2016, so the risk is simple: the client could break and take your contacts with it. There is no clean export-all button either. The Contacts view and the contacts.adr file only hold saved contacts, not everyone you have emailed, which is why an extractor that reads the whole store is the reliable answer.”
Where Opera Mail keeps your addresses
Knowing where the data lives helps with every method. On Windows, Opera Mail stores its profile at:
C:Usersyour-nameAppDataRoamingOpera MailOpera Mail
Inside that folder, two things matter. The contacts.adr file is the address book that holds your saved contacts. The mail folder holds the messages themselves in Opera’s MBS store format, grouped by account and date. To find the exact path from inside the app, open the menu, then Help, then About Opera Mail, which lists the Mail Directory. Note that AppData is hidden by default, so type the path into the address bar if you do not see it.
Extract email addresses from Opera Mail by hand
Two free routes work without any software. Both are fine for a short list, though both have the same limit, noted after.
- Copy from the Contacts view. In Opera Mail, open the Contacts panel, select the contacts you want and copy their addresses into a document or spreadsheet.
- Open the contacts.adr file. Go to the profile folder above, right-click contacts.adr, open it with Notepad and read the saved addresses from the text.
The catch with both: they only cover saved contacts. Any address that is sitting in your inbox or sent mail but was never added as a contact will not appear. The contacts.adr text is also raw and awkward to clean up. For a full list of everyone you have corresponded with, use the bulk method next.
Extract email addresses from Opera Mail in bulk
To capture every address, not just saved contacts, you need a tool that reads the whole mail store and collects the addresses from the messages. That pulls in the From, To, Cc and Bcc fields, plus addresses written in the message body, across every folder, with duplicates removed.
The Corbett Email Address Extractor reads your Opera Mail data and pulls every unique email address from all folders into one clean list. It lets you extract from selected folders such as Inbox or Sent, searches and filters so you collect only what you need, then a free demo edition runs on every edition of Windows.
- Install and open the tool, then choose the Opera Mail account or point it at the Opera Mail data folder.
- Let it scan, then pick the folders to include, such as Inbox and Sent.
- Click Extract, choose Email Addresses, then save the list.
Export the list to CSV or a mailing tool
Once the addresses are collected, save them as a CSV or text file. A CSV opens straight in Excel or Google Sheets. It imports cleanly into a new email client, a contacts app or a mailing platform. That is the point of extracting them: a portable list you control, ready to use anywhere, rather than addresses locked inside a client that no longer gets updates.
Move off Opera Mail
Since Opera Mail is no longer supported, extracting your addresses is a good moment to move the mail itself too. You can bring the whole mailbox into a current client or a portable format so nothing depends on the old app. You can move it into a living client like Thunderbird, shown in the guide below. You can also keep a fixed archive by learning how to convert Opera Mail to PDF. If you also need the files inside your emails, see how to extract attachments from Opera Mail.
Frequently asked questions
Can I export all email addresses from Opera Mail?
Not with a built-in button. The Contacts view and the contacts.adr file only hold saved contacts. To pull every address from your inbox and sent mail, use an extractor tool that reads the whole store.
Where is the Opera Mail contacts file?
It is contacts.adr, in C:Usersyour-nameAppDataRoamingOpera MailOpera Mail. AppData is hidden, so type the path into the address bar. You can open contacts.adr in Notepad to read the saved addresses.
How do I get addresses that were never saved as contacts?
Copying from the Contacts view or contacts.adr misses those. An extractor reads the messages themselves, collecting addresses from the From, To, Cc, Bcc and body across every folder, so nothing is left out.
Is Opera Mail still supported?
No. Opera stopped developing Opera Mail in 2016. It still runs but gets no updates or security fixes, which is why extracting and backing up your data is worth doing now.
What format do the extracted addresses come in?
A CSV or text file. A CSV opens in Excel or Google Sheets and imports into a new email client, a contacts app or a mailing tool.
Can I move my Opera Mail emails to another client?
Yes. You can import Opera Mail into Thunderbird for a supported client. You can also convert it to PDF for a fixed archive, freeing your mail from the old app.