How to Save a Backup of All Gmail Emails to Your Computer? 

Do you prefer Gmail as your email service? If that's the case, do you want to keep a copy of all Gmail emails you've received and sent up to this point on your computer, device, or hard drive locally? Fortunately, backing up all of your Gmail emails is simple, and you can do so from any device, including a Mac, Windows PC, iPhone, iPad, or Android.

Google's cloud servers securely store all of the emails you send and receive using Gmail. However, if your account is hacked or becomes inaccessible for any reason, you may lose access to all of your emails, as well as potentially crucial personal and business interactions. You may potentially lose important contacts and their email addresses as a result of this. This is why merely having a copy of your Gmail data might be useful if you ever find yourself in such a circumstance, or if you prefer to have a local backup of your data rather than depending on cloud services.

Read along and we’ll be covering how you can save a backup of all your Gmail emails.

How to Save a Local Backup of All Gmail Emails to Your Computer Storage

We'll be using Google Takeout to extract a copy of all your Gmail emails. It makes no difference what device you use as long as you have a web browser. To get started, simply follow the steps below.

1. To get started, go to takeout.google.com and log in with your Google account. After that, pick "Deselect all" from the drop-down menu at the top. This is due to the fact that your data from other Google services is also picked.

2. Now, scroll down and check the box next to “Mail”. Then, click on “All Mail data included” to customize the data you want to download.

3. Here, you can either choose to get a copy of all the emails or select specific folders as you prefer. Once you’re done with the selection, click “OK” at the bottom.

4. Scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click on “Next step” as shown in the screenshot below.

5. Now, you’ll be able to select the delivery method. By default, you’ll get a download link to your Gmail data via email. In addition to that, you can choose the maximum size for the downloadable file, after which it’ll be split into multiple files. Click on “Create export” when you’re ready.

6. Now, you just need to wait until the file is ready. This could take anywhere from a few hours to a few days depending on how large your Gmail data is. However, you’ll receive an email when the export is done.

There you go. Now you’ve learned how to save a local backup of all your emails in Gmail. That wasn’t too hard, right?

Keep in mind that the downloading file will be in ZIP format, which means it will be compressed. Before you can access all of the data, you must first extract it. If you're using a Mac, simply double-click the zip file in Finder to open it, however if you're using Safari on your iPhone or iPad to download this Gmail data, you can use the Files app to unzip the file. Users of Windows should be able to unzip files easily in Windows Explorer.

Similarly, if you use other Google services such as YouTube, Google Maps, and Google Play, you may get a copy of your data stored on these platforms in the same way.

We hope you were able to obtain a copy of all emails sent and received through your Gmail account. What are your opinions on backing up your data locally to your computer or device using Google Takeout? Please share your useful thoughts and experiences in the comments area below, and if you have a different way, please let us know.

Thank you for reading!

credit: osxdaily