You’ve mentioned backing up GMail to somewhere on your own computer; how do you do that?
Of all the current free email services, GMail is my favorite. I know I’ve railed against free email services as your only email service, but they definitely have their place. And GMail is the service I recommend.
In part, I recommend it because I can answer this question. GMail is easy to backup.
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In a nutshell, the way to backup GMail to your own machine is to use a “traditional” email client, like Outlook, Thunderbird, or others, and configure them to use GMail’s POP3 access to download your mail.
Now, depending on how you use GMail there are a couple of approaches to doing this.
First let’s set you up with POP3 access.
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POP3 is the way traditional email programs that run on your PC get your email from your ISP. One of the reasons I recommend GMail is that they support using POP3 to download mail from your GMail account.
I recommend Thunderbird, free, good, reliable and feature rich email program. Perhaps most importantly for our backup purposes, your email in Thunderbird is stored as text files.
Once you have an email program, GMail’s online help has instructions for configuring POP3 access in many popular email programs. Here are instructions for configuring Thunderbird.
Once configured, when you go do download or “check for new mail” using your email program you’ll get your GMail. The first time it could be a lot, depending on how long you’ve been using GMail and how much email you have.
Do that periodically, and the mail that’s store on your machine is your backup should you ever lose anything from GMail. You might even consider backing up those files along with your regular PC backups.
And of course, you could consider simply using your email program instead of the GMail web interface, since you now have that as an option.
If at any time you want to re-download all the mail in your GMail account, you can. GMail help includes instructions to backup all mail by forcing GMail to download all email, even that which might have been downloaded before. That’s a good way to create a snapshot at any point in time.
Thunderbird 2 makes it even easier to download GMail messages since they have a special option for setting up Google Mail access. I think all you need to give Thunderbird now is your username and password and Thunderbird handles all the server settings and port settings for you. (Although since I upgraded from Thunderbird 1.5 where I already have Gmail setup I haven’t actually setup a Google Mail account on Thunderbirds 2 yet – I have seen the new option)
Eli
Thunderbird does this for outlook.com, Yahoo Mail, and other majore email providers. Great feature.
I backup my Gmail account in a different, yet easier method. I created another email account (yahoo), and using the Gmail rules, all incoming GMail emails are automatically forwarded to the yahoo email account. I also use this backup method for files I want to keep. I email the file to Gmail, which automatically forwards to yahoo. I then have the file located on three different places: my own PC, Gmail & Yahoo. I do not use this method for proprietary files.
regarding gmail, it is my understanding that gmail does not have a “folder” system, therefore if you transfer all of your hotmail email……you will get a very long list of email and not individual folders…..havent looked at this recently, but this was my last understanding.
gmail is still the best by far. all my site emails are directed to my gmail for reading and pricessing and reply.
with google talk and the simplest interface no email service comes close and not to mention the lightning speed.
What I don’t understand is, if you delete an email on your gmail, wont it also delete that same email on Thunderbird? So how does that backup your gmail emails?
22-Apr-2010
Leo, why POP and not IMAP? I installed Thunderbird and downloaded all my gmail (lots!), but I’m beginning to understand that if I delete it in gmail, it doesn’t delete it in POP, so the file in Thunderbird (I suppose) grows ever larger? Or is the idea that you delete it in TB as well? Have you ever used Gmail Backup or MailStore to backup gmail?
10-Jun-2011
If we backup, and if we create another account (with different name), will we be able to import the old email back?
Thanks!Thanks
@Willing
One way to export emails from one account to another is to set up an email program to manage both accounts via IMAP. You can then move or copy the emails from the Inbox of the old account to the Inbox of the new account
What is IMAP? And How Can it Help Me Manage My Email?