Export Gmail
Sometimes there is a need to export your email. Over the next few posts, I will list instructions to export from a variety of sources. In today’s post, we will walk-thru how to export email from Gmail.
Exporting the whole mailbox
You can download an archive of your Gmail mailbox (as an MBOX file) using Google Takeout.
1. Go to http://www.google.com/takeout and sign in using the Google account associated with the
mailbox to be exported.
2. Click “Create an archive.”
3. Uncheck all products except “Mail.”
4. Click “CREATE ARCHIVE.” Once your request is submitted, you can feel free to log out and close
the window. The archive creation process may take a few minutes or several hours depending
on how much data is in your mailbox.
5. After the archive is finished, you will receive an email with a link to download a .zip file
containing your mail archive.
Exporting all messages with the same label
You can also use Google Takeout to download an archive of only messages assigned specific labels.
1. Go to http://www.google.com/takeout and sign in using the Google account associated with the
mailbox to be exported.
2. Click “Create an archive.”
3. Uncheck all products except “Mail.”
4. Click the dropdown icon to the left of “Mail” or click “Edit” to the right of “Mail.”
5. Click the bubble next to “Select labels,” then checkmark the labels you wish to export.
6. Click “Done.”
7. Click “CREATE ARCHIVE.” Once your request is submitted, you can feel free to log out and close
the window. The archive creation process may take a few minutes or several hours depending
on how much data is in your mailbox.
8. After the archive is finished, you will receive an email with a link to download a .zip file
containing your mail archive.
Exporting individual emails
If you only want to export a few messages and don’t want to assign them all the same label, you can
save individual email threads as PDF files.
1. Open the message you want to save as a PDF.
2. Click the printer icon at the top of the message display.
3. In the menu where you can select your printer, select “Print to PDF” or “PDF printer” instead.
(This step varies depending on your browser and operating system).
4. This should open up a familiar “Save” window in which you can save the message to your
computer as a PDF file