IOS – In the iOS Mail app, how to share an email, or save to Files, etc.

I was searching for information on this myself because I needed to back up my email data from the device before doing a restore (it's just shameful that Apple doesn't consider your email messages to be important enough to include in its backups). The following information is valid for IOS 6, I hope it applies to your situation with IOS 3 as well. On IOS 6 at least, you won't need to mess around with SQlite or anything, it's all plain text.

You need access to the filesystem on the device. There are various PC and Mac apps that will browse the files on the device -- Ifunbox is one that claims to allow access to the filesystem without jailbreaking.

Instructions for jailbreaking your specific device (if it turns out you need it) can be found at http://stateofjailbreak.com/guide/iphone-3gs/3-1-2/.

The emails are stored in User/Library/Mail (that's a symlink, the actual path seems to be var/mobile/library/mail). Just copy the whole thing to your laptop.

Inside there, you'll find directories named after each email account set up on the device. There's a pretty self-explanatory folder structure within each account folder. Once you drill down, the emails themselves are stored in individual plaintext *.emlx files, complete with all headers and uuencoded attachments (there's also sometimes an "attachments" folder which has the extracted version of the attachments). On a PC, you'll want to rename them to *.eml files, and then you'll be able to import them into various email programs like Thunderbird or Outlook; with some you'll need a utility, with others the import function is built in.

I haven't gotten far enough to determine if copying a backup of these folders onto a device restored from itunes backup will restore your archive of emails or not. Did I mention how annoying it is that Apple doesn't think your offline emails are worth saving when you do a backup of your device?

Sorry no, you are correct in that the only options for a URL within Mail are to Open, Add to Reading List and Copy the URL.

I tried the third-party email app Mailbox and it doesn't actually recognise a URL and offer any options. If you hold your finger over a URL it just selects part of it and offers to Copy or Define it.

I also tried the Gmail app and it just offers the same three options as Mail.