Gmail Tips

How To Download Gmail MBOX Data Using Google Takeout

Abhishek Sharma
Published 2020-07-17

Google’s Gmail is widely used as the most preferred email client for both personal and professional purposes. Gmail has now tens of several Google support and services such as Drive, Task, Docs, etc. integrated into it, making email service more flexible for users.

However, there can be instances where you might want to backup or export your Gmail data, including emails, chats, and attachments to some other service or merely save it for offline access. Thanks to Google, it has a separate service to assist users in doing the same and creating a backup compressed file to save Gmail data, and data from other Google services as well. This service is called Google Takeout.

Let’s learn how this service acts as a boon to all Gmail users and why it is important to use it.

What is Google Takeout?

We all know that our mails also account for the storage taken upon our Google Drive account, which lasts for only 15GB if not paid for. In case you are also saving Google Photos, Docs, and other scanned documents and data on the Drive, you may run out of that space real soon.

Google Takeout allows users to move this huge collection of emails, chats, and attachments, images, etc. on a desktop PC for offline access. This service also helps in transferring files from Gmail to other services such as Apple Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird in case you want to switch to them. Moreover, it creates a backup of your Gmail data offline, which can be further uploaded back.

Takeout is a cross-platform service and works on Mac, Windows, Linux, as well as mobile operating systems iOS and Android.

What is MBOX Data?

An MBOX file, commonly expanded as an email mailbox file is a file format (.mbox) that stores all the emails from your email client in a single text file. The only point is that the format keeps all the email messages in a form that all of them appear joined in a single file, written one after the other.

You can separate the mails by a simple trick. Any new email in the text file began right from the header, with “From:”. This way, when you see a new header, you’ll know that a new email has begun.

How To Use Google Takeout to Download Gmail MBOX Data?

Step 1: You can head to the Google Takeout page right here.

Step 2: Here, you can notice that Google Takeout has selected every Google support and service data for backup. Click on Deselect All.

Step 3: Scroll Down and Select the option – Mail.

Step 4: Select the Delivery Method. Choose where you want that MBOX file to be delivered to you.

Step 5: Choose whether you want this MBOX export to be a one-time affair or you want to frequently backup emails.

Step 6:  Select File Type of the file that is to be created.

Step 7: Select File Size Limit of the export file. If the data in the Mail exceeds the set limit, the export file will be split into pieces accordingly.

Step 8: Click on Create Export

Step 9: Monitor Export Progress.

Step 10: Check the created export file in the set destination.

Note. The time taken to create the export will depend upon the size of the Mail data and the capacity of your Internet connection.

What Else Can Google Takeout Export?

Takeout can practically back up data from a lot of Google services. Here are a few services whose data can be exported in different formats via Google Takeout:

Things To Know About Takeout Exports

There are a few things you should keep in mind about Google Takeout exports:

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