Virgin.net email provider ceasing to exist.

Hello
Two things have recently happened
1/ just had my W10 auto upgrade and all is working well.
2/ found out that my email provider virgin.net is ceasing to exist.

I'm running this email through windows live mail and all seems to be working well.
I have always used windows for my email and would like to continue doing that but how do I move all my historical emails over to a new provider before Virgin stop/cancel their product.
If I take their BB they will move me over to their email client free of charge keeping all my stored emails, but if not it seems I will lose all ability to see them anymore.

I've had this email address for over 20 years and have some very important emails I don't want to lose.

I can see under file there is import / export options and initially I have exported all my emails to a folder on my desktop so I've got them.
Once I have chosen a new email tag is it just a case of importing them back into there and also letting everyone know my new tag and changing all my email site tags too.
What a pain.

Thanks.

H E L L O ooo000OO.

Does anybody have a helpful few words or questions on my above post.

Thanks

Hi

I guess you have had one of the virgin free email accounts they are now discontinuing? That's rather unfortunate. When I moved email providers, what I did was

1) Create new email account (I recommend Gmail or Outlook.com , any other free service will be a crapfest)
2) If you are planning on using this with Windows Live Mail, add it into there using IMAP

3) Drag and drop all emails from the old account into the new account's folders through Windows Live Mail

Yes, it really is that simple. Hope this helps.

Thanks gents I'll try that.
I did get back in touch with Virgin and they are now saying it will just be the address that will cease to pass on any emails but all my historical emails will continue to exist in my Windows Live Mail and not disappear as they first said.

I hope that is right as all I now need to do is just create an email address in say Gmail or similar and replace it as my main address on all the visited sites that may need to contact me.

Thanks again gents most helpful.

as nigelmercier said , register a cheap domain and then it won't matter WHO you have an email address with , you can just re-direct the email to any provider and nobody will ever know the difference.

I use Domains, Hosting, Email, Dedicated Servers, & Cloud | Fasthosts , they're cheap , reliable and support is great , mailbox redirects are really easy to configure too.

Thanks again all.
I've had the virgin.net email since I started BB, in the days of dial-up and always thought I OWNED THE ADDRESS and it would follow me. A bit naïve on my part but after 30+ years I believed that to be the case.

I shall follow the guide lines given above to make sure that can't happen again.

Best and a early Merry Christmas too.