In the event that your mailbox reaches it's storage limit you may wish to remove old emails off the Google servers and save them locally for future reference.

Or you might like to store a snapshot of your emails as a redundancy backup.

This can be done in a few steps.

  1. Prepare the emails to be backed up.
    1. Login to your Gmail account at https://mail.google.com 
    2. In the search bar type before:2020/01/01 (The date being the last days email to keep online).
    3. Press Enter.
    4. Check the Select All box.
    5. All 50 conversations on this page are selected. Select all conversations that match this search (Press the blue hyperlink).
    6. Choose the label icon in the toolbar at the top.
    7. Create new
    8. Give the archive a name ie. Archived Email pre 2020. This will apply the label to all of the emails selected. This can take a while for alot of emails. Wait for the Working tag at the top of the page to go away and you see the label appear next to the selected emails.
  2. Preparing the download file.
    1. Go to https://takeout.google.com
    2. Login with the same Google account if required.
    3. Press Deselect all.
    4. Scroll down to find Mail (Look for the Gmail logo).
    5. Check the selection box.
    6. Select All Mail data included.
    7. Un-Check Include all messages in Mail (Unless you want to download your entire mailbox).
    8. Scroll down and un-check all the remaining boxes.
    9. Check the selection box next to the label you created in the preparation step. ie. Archived Email pre 2020.
    10. Click OK.
    11. Scroll to the bottom of the page. Select Next step
    12. Delivery method: Choose your preferred delivery method. You can have the files added to your Google Drive, Dropbox or by default, have an email link sent to you to download the files.
    13. Frequency: Choose Export once.
    14. File type & size: Choose .zip and 2GB
    15. Select Create Export
    16. Wait until the export process is completed and you receive an email about the completion.
  3. Reading your emails offline.
    1. Download and save your Google Takeout file.
    2. Unzip the file.
    3. Download our pre-packaged portable version of Thunderbird email here
    4. Unzip the folder to a location with enough storage space.
    5. Run the file ThunderbirdPortable.exe.
    6. Right-Click on Local Folders
    7. Select ImportExportTools NG -> Import mbox file.
    8. Select Import directly one or more mbox files.
    9. Choose your archive mbox file you downloaded from Google Takeout.
    10. Your emails will now import to a folder under Local Folders.
  4. Clean your Gmail and remove the archived emails.
    1. Login to your Gmail account at https://mail.google.com 
    2. Find the archive label.
    3. Check the Select All box.
    4. All 50 conversations on this page are selected. Select all conversations that match this search (Press the blue hyperlink).
    5. Delete the emails (WARNING: ensure you have a back up of your mbox file. Your emails cannot be retrieved)
    6. Select the 3 dots next to the label and Remove label.

You can now view all your old emails at any time by running Thunderbird mail. Keep the Thunderbird mail folder in a safe place. You can store this on a server, USB hard drive or on your local PC. 

 

 

 

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