Migrate old mails from Gmail to Dropbox / Sync.com

I've been using Gmail for many years and would love to find a way to move the older mails to offline storage (and the to my sync.com folder).

I have looked at Google Takeout and it seems as I can download all emails to an mbox file. That would kind of work, but it would be better if I can find a way to migrate all mails but the last year to some local tool incrementally.

I would then have access to the most important mails via gmail (as now) but wouldn't have to share all off my info with google + save some space.

It needs to run on both Mac and Linux (would be good to have it in Windows as well) and preferably be saved in an open format so my mails can be accessed later as well as now.

Are there any such tools available? Or am I just making it too complex for me :)

Ola

Posted 2018-10-24T12:53:17.237

Reputation: 179

Answers

Well, as far as Internet email goes, mbox is the most open format there can be...

Gmail provides standard IMAP4 and POP3 access. This means you can use any IMAP or POP client, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Fetchmail, getmail, OfflineIMAP, imapsync, mpop, isync, etc.

Most of those tools can download messages either to a mbox file, or to a Maildir format folder, or directly to another IMAP server of your choice. (I listed those meant specifically for batch download, but this includes many desktop mail apps as well: e.g. Thunderbird stores everything in Maildir or mbox.)

Additionally, just about any mail app will let you drag & drop messages from one IMAP server to another. (Some of them will let you drag messages to a local file folder, but that's not a convenient backup method at all.)

user1686

Posted 2018-10-24T12:53:17.237

Reputation: 283 655

Thanks a lot! I'll try Thunderbird or apple Mail then. Do you happen to know if it's doable to save the local mails to dropbox / sync.com? – Ola – 2018-10-26T11:16:59.100

Sure, you can save them as files (individual .eml's or a single mbox), though you won't get the convenient browsing/reading that a mail app gives... Or you can put the whole Thunderbird settings folder in Dropbox. – user1686 – 2018-10-26T11:26:02.447

I've been struggling with the imap to mbox export via both thunderbird and apple mail. All seems to crash (due to the big number of mails i guess?) somewhere before the mail are downloaded.

I just went with google takeout instead. Exporting all mails to mbox and then later import them to apple mail / thunderbird.

Thanks for all help!

Ola

Posted 2018-10-24T12:53:17.237

Reputation: 179