How to download your Gmail emails to your computer. You can download just a single individual email message or every email that’s currently stored on your Gmail account.
Webmail is great, but you don’t have any sort of backup for your emails. Occasionally you’ll receive an email that you really do need to keep safe. You can create a backup simply by downloading to your PC.
Another reason to download your emails is to create space on your Gmail account. Although Google gives you 15 GB of storage space for free, tat can quickly fill up if you’re receiving lots of mail.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to download both individual messages for safe keeping and also how to download all your Gmails.
How To Download An Email From Gmail.
Downloading just a single email from your Gmail account is fairly straightforward to do.
In your Gmail account, open the email that you want to download.
Click the 3 vertical dots in the top right hand corner of the message window.
On the menu that opens, click Download Message.
The email will download as an eml file.
Related Post.
How To Download All Your Gmail Emails.
If you wanted to download all of your Gmail emails, then you can. It’s a bit more involved than downloading a single email, but you can do it.
You’ll need to visit the Google Takeout website. You can click the link below.
If you’re asked to log in, use your Gmail account details. The Google Takeout page allows you to download just about all the data that Google has about you.
By default, the Takeout page will auto select all your Google services.
Click the Deselect All link. Then scroll down the page and select Mail.
Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Next Step button.
It Could Take Some Time.
Downloading everything from Gmail could take some time. It all depends on how many emails you have.
Google Takeout Options.
On the next screen you’ll have various options concerning the file type, frequency and destination.
You can leave everything here set at the defaults.
Scroll down and click the Create Export button.
Google will notify you by email when your emails are ready for downloading.
As I said earlier, it could take a long time, even days if you’ve got a huge amount of emails.
So just sit tight and wait for the email notification to arrive.
When Your Gmails Are Ready For Download.
When Google has gathered all your emails and made them ready for downloading, you’ll receive a notification from Google Takeout to your Inbox.
Open the Takeout email and then click the link Download Your Files.
You’ll probably have to sign in with your Gmail password, but after that your downloads will start automatically.
Wait for everything to finish downloading and then close the page.
Mbox File.
When your Gmails have finished downloading, you’ll have a zipped folder named “takeout” followed by some random digits.
That zipped folder contains all the email messages from your Gmail account.
They’re in the form of a single Mbox file, rather than many .eml files.
So your next problem will be “How can you open or read the Mbox file?”
And that’s a good question.
Summary.
Downloading your emails from Gmail isn’t something you’ll need to do everyday. But if that day comes around, at least you now know how to do it.
If you find yourself wanting to download your Gmails often, then consider setting up an email client and configuring it to keep copies on your PC.
