How to Backup Your Gmail Emails: A Step-By-Step Guide

Gmail backup at a glance

• Use native features like email forwarding, POP, or IMAP to store email copies in another account or client.

Gmail has over 1.8 billion users. As individuals and businesses become heavily reliant on Gmail, backing up Gmail has become important. 

That’s not all. Google is not responsible for maintaining a backup of your Gmail data. You cannot hold Google liable for the loss of your Gmail data either. Just check out the Google Terms of Service.  

Step 1: Log in to your Gmail and go to “Settings”. You will find an option called “Forwarding and POP/IMAP.”

Step 2: Click the “Add a forwarding address” tab and enter your destination email id.

Step 3: Click “Proceed” on the confirmation box. A confirmation code will be sent to your destination mail.

Step 4: Copy the code from your destination email.

Step 5: Go back to the “Settings” of your primary email.

Step 6: You will see an option in the forwarding menu asking you to enter the confirmation code.

Step 7: Enter the confirmation code and click on “Verify.”

Step 8: This procedure only adds your destination email to the primary id.

Step 9: To enable forwarding, select the “Forward a copy of incoming mail” option. You can add multiple emails for forwarding and customize your options.

Step 10: If you want to forward emails received only from a specific person or the emails that contain a particular word/subject, you can do so by customizing the forwarding option.

Post Office Protocol (POP) is an inbuilt Gmail feature that downloads emails to Microsoft Outlook email client. This second copy will also be available offline. 

Step 1: Navigate to “Settings” and select “Forwarding and POP/IMAP”.

Step 2: Enable POP by choosing the radio button “Enable POP for all mail” or “Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on,” according to your need.

Step 3: To give login permission to email clients, navigate to the My Account page and click “Security” from the menu on the left-hand side. Scroll down to “Less secure app access” and click “Turn on access”, Turn on access by clicking the toggle bar. 

Step 4: After enabling POP in Gmail security settings, you can configure your email client Microsoft Outlook to download your emails.

Step 5: You can launch Outlook and select add account by clicking on the “Info” option in the File tab.

Step 6: After adding an account, Outlook will take you to the configuration wizard. Enable the checkbox “Let me set up my account manually” to configure POP.

Step 7: Select “POP” from the list of account type options that appear on the screen.

Step 8: Fill in the following details:

Step 9: Click on the “Next” option.

Step 10: Enter the password for your Gmail account.

Step 11: Now your email client account is set up.

Step 12: Click on the “Send/Receive All Folders’’ option to download all your emails.

Step 13: This will generate a second copy of your emails.

Step 1: Navigate to “Settings” and click the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.

Step 2: Select the radio button next to “Enable IMAP” and click “Save Changes”.

Step 3: For your desktop email client to be able to access your Gmail account, you will have to provide access permission. Navigate to the My Account page and click “Security” from the menu on the left-hand side. Scroll down to “Less secure app access” and click “Turn on access”, Turn on access by clicking the toggle bar.Note: To enable this option, you have to disable two-factor authentication for your Gmail account. This compromises the security of your Gmail account.

Step 4: Next, enter your login credentials in your email client to sync the emails.

How to Set Up Auto Archiving Feature in Outlook

Step 1: Click the “File” tab and select “Options.”

Step 2: Navigate to “Advanced>AutoArchive Settings”

Step 3: Click “Run AutoArchive every” and select how often you want it to run. By default, it will be set for 14 days. You can change it according to your need.

Step 4: Click the “Clean out items older than” option and set a time period to move your files from Inbox to the Archive folder. 

Step 5: Click “Move old items to:” and type a file name for the archived items to be transferred to, or click Browse to select from a list.

Step 6: Click “OK”.

To access Takeout, you can either use this link or navigate to the page using the below four steps. 

Step 1: Log in to your Gmail account. 

Step 2: Click the waffle icon on the top right-hand side corner and select  ‘Account’. 

Step 3: Click “Data & personalization” from the menu on the left-hand side. 

Step 4: Scroll down and click “Download your data”  under “Download or delete your data”.

Step 1: Check the box next to Gmail on the takeout screen. 

Step 2: All mail data is included for download, by default. You can choose what to download from your Gmail account under the Mail content options.

Step 3: After customizing your options, click “Next Step” and then select the following:

Under the “Delivery method” you can choose to add the downloaded data to your Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, or receive a link to the archive, in your email.

Under “Frequency of export” you can choose to export the files once or once every 2 months.

Under “File type & size,” you can choose between .zip or .tgz for the file type. After choosing all the options, click “Create export”.

Step 4: Click the “Create export” button.

Step 5: Once you click the “Create export” button, data will be organized for you to download to a storage device– computer, USB device, etc. You will receive an email once the export is complete or you can check the status on your Takeout page by selecting the “Manage exports” option.

Step 6: In the “Manage your exports” page, locate your Gmail export and the “Download” button next to the created archive. Sign-in again to verify your account. 

To know more about Google Takeout, click here. 

Gmvault is an open source command line tool to create a Gmail backup. The application can be downloaded at gmvault.org. For installation, click gmvault.org/install.html#quickstart

Step 1: Open the Gmvault application.

Step 2: You can start the backup by giving the “Gmvault sync your email id” command. For example, Gmvault sync bruce@testing-team.com\

Step 3: Press enter after typing out the command.

Step 4: The tool will automatically create a folder in your computer where your backups will be stored.

Step 5: Press enter, and you will now be redirected to the Google login page.

Step 6: Sign in using your credentials.

Step 7: Next, Gmvault will ask your permission to access your Gmail account.

Step 8: After giving permission, it will generate a key. Copy the authentication key from your Gmail and paste it on the Gmvault application.

Step 9: Press enter.

If you’ve subscribed to Google Workspace business or enterprise plans, administrators can access Google Vault to archive data. 

However, Google Vault is not a backup tool. Read more to understand why Backup and Archive are not the same. 

Step 1: If you are the admin, log in using your Google Workspace credentials using this URL: ediscovery.google.com/. Once logged in, you will be taken to the homepage of Google Vault. 

Step 2: Create retention by navigating to the retention module. 

Step 3: Click on the edit option on “mail”. 

Step 4: Set your default retention rule indefinitely – or for specific days. This helps in retaining the data stored in Gmail, Hangouts, Drive, and Groups – for as long as necessary, even if a user permanently deletes them. 

If you want to know how to create holds and matters, set retention rules, and generate reports in Google Vault, check out Google Vault: The Ultimate Guide for IT Administrators 2019. 

SysCloud provides a reliable, highly secure cloud backup solution for Google Workspace applications. SysCloud’s backup application can automatically back up all your Gmail emails, along with attachments. The emails are then available for you to restore at any time, at the click of a button. 

Click here to learn more about SysCloud.

Step 1: Log in to your SysCloud account/Create your account.

Step 2: On the homepage, click “Start Backup” under the Backup drop-down menu.

Step 3: Initiate your backup by specifying the data to be backed up. For example, you can select either the entire domain, a set of users, or specific organizational units depending on the requirement.

Step 5: To backup the entire domain, click the “Entire Domain” radio button. If you want to backup specific users, select the ‘Select Users & Teams’ radio button. Click ‘Next’.

Step 6: Choose the domain/users you want to backup by selecting the checkbox, and then click ‘Next’.

Step 7: To have only Gmail backup: uncheck the checkboxes under ‘Drive’, ‘Sites’, ‘Contacts’, and ‘Calendar’.

Step 8: Click on the “Start Backup” button. SysCloud will now begin to back up the selected users’ data.

Why should I get Gmail backup?

How to recover deleted Gmail emails if you don’t have a backup?

If you deleted your emails and do not have Gmail backup, read our in-depth article –  ‘How to Recover Permanently Deleted Emails from Gmail?’

Does Google backup Gmail emails? 

No, Google is not responsible for backing up your Gmail emails. It is clearly stated in the Terms of Service that they are not responsible for any data loss due to the user’s negligence or any kind of malicious activity. It is recommended to take steps to ensure the security of your data. 

How do I download Gmail emails to my computer?

You can download your Gmail emails to your computer as .zip files using Google Takeout. Learn how to do this. 

Is Gmail Secure and Private?

Has Gmail ever been hacked?

In May 2017 a massive phishing scam spread through the internet like wildfire affecting unsuspecting Gmail users. According to The Verge, attackers sent invites to edit a Google Doc from someone they may have known. If they click on the link it would send them to a real Google page asking for permission to access their data. Once they grant access their emails and contacts were compromised.