Same here. I am a packrat on the computer and can retrieve emails I sent/received from the early 1990s. Cloud storage is only good so long as you keep paying, and free usually changes to paid. I’ve had one service company go bankrupt, losing everything on their servers, luckily nearly all backed up.
How can you read emails created in the 1990s?
I have all my emails from the mid 1990s. Trouble is, I was using CompuServe for Windows as my email program. In the late 1990s, CS released a new program. So now I have two CS email folders, one for each program's emails.
I switched to Outlook in the 2000s, then to Thunderbird in 2005.
I could still run CompuServe Windows in Windows XP, if only to search and read those emails. But then Windows 7 came, and could not run CS for Windows.
So now I have four email folders. Two for CS, one for Outlook, and one created by Thunderbird. The latter is the only folder I can easily access.
I can't search the CS folders. I can only click a random email, then use Notepad to read it. Which I can, amid much garble.
I also have all my letters and other work created on WordStar, going back to 1986. I can read them with Open Office, but again, amid much garble.
Here I thought I was the only one who emails from the 1990’s!