How to back up gmail to my computer?

Question

I am using gmail as a part of Google Apps for Domains. I'd like to back up all my email.

I've tried setting up IMAP in Thunderbird and it works reasonably well (except it times out way too much, forcing me to help it along manually). However, I have a ton of labels, which in the IMAP land map to folders. And in Thunderbird, you have to click on each folder separately and tell it to download everything. Painful.

Is there a tool that will let me do this easier?

Answer 1

There are many ways to do this:

• Matt Cutts: How to back up your Gmail on Linux in four easy steps
• Back up Gmail with fetchmail
• Backing up Gmail with Thunderbird
• Gmail Backup utility
• BackupMyMail

Answer 2

Most email clients when viewing over IMAP will clearly distinguish between the IMAP store and the local store.

Simply copy the messages / folders to the local storage using your email client's copy command, and it should copy the messages in the local storage.

Make sure not to move them, since this will more than likely remove them from the email server.

Edit Outlook seems to handle IMAP servers a lot better than Thunderbird does from my experience. Perhaps it would be a good idea to get a copy of Office 2003 / 2007, and work from that? (Legal copy of course :P)

All the major windows clients (Thunderbird, Outlook) will clearly differentiate between the local storage and the IMAP store. Not sure about Windows Mail or OE though.

Answer 3

http://www.gmail-backup.com/

Answer 4

Not written for backup purposes, but: see also How to Access Gmail When It’s Down at Lifehacker.

As for backing up Gmail:

When using IMAP to backup Gmail, one also needs to backup the local IMAP storage. When not doing that, then when messages get deleted on either the server or on the local machine, they will also be gone on the other machine upon the very first IMAP synchronisation. So, using IMAP by itself is not a backup. (As for actually downloading the message, ensure to disable options such as "Fetch Headers Only", and for Thunderbird see also the mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new setting.)

When using POP (like when using getmail or fetchmail as listed in nagul's answer) then one should consider how to restore this if ever needed. POP does not know about any folder structure. Even worse: using POP you will basically download every message you ever receive. Even if you delete it on the server (like through the Gmail web site) then the local copy will still exist. If you ever need to restore then you have to go through a huge pile of messages and need to find the messages that are still of interest. Also note that using POP does not backup the Sent Items.

Answer 5

Would Offline GMail be sufficient?

Answer 6

A good general-purpose tool for maintaining local copies of your mail is OfflineIMAP. Here's my config file (with personal info censored) for backing up my gmail:

[general]
ui = Curses.Blinkenlights, TTY.TTYUI, Noninteractive.Basic, Noninteractive.Quiet
metadata = ~/.offlineimap
accounts = GMail
maxsyncaccounts = 1

[Account GMail]
localrepository = Gmail-local
remoterepository = Gmail-remote

[Repository Gmail-local]
type = Maildir
localfolders = ~/Mail/Gmail
sep = /

[Repository Gmail-remote]
type = Gmail
remoteuser = ********@gmail.com
remotepass = ********
holdconnectionopen = true
keepalive = 60
maxconnections = 1

Yes, unfortunately, you put your password in plaintext in the config file. There may be a better way, but I'm not paranoid enough to go looking for it.