How To Backup Gmail Emails To Computer Without Using Third-Party Software

We all regularly backup our data from phones to computers and computers to external hard drives and then backup our data to the cloud, but most of us never think of backing up cloud data, like emails, contacts, and calendars.

When it comes to backing up emails from our Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo! and other accounts, there are plenty of options available to choose from. There are tools to download emails from your account and then there are services to move your emails from one webmail provider to another. For instance, one can easily backup Gmail emails to Outlook and vice versa.

Up until a couple weeks ago, we all had to take the help of third-party tools and services to back up our Gmail account(s). Google account holders no longer need to use third-party tools or services to create a backup of their emails and calendars, as Google now officially allows users download a copy their data from Google accounts with a few mouse clicks.

The good thing is that in addition to your emails, you can create an archive comprising your Google+, YouTube, Google Drive, and other Google data and then download the archive.

Backup Gmail to PC without third-party software

Here is how to download your Gmail messages (all emails including spam and trash) and other data:

Step 1: Open this link in your web browser, enter your Google username and password (if you aren’t signed-in already), click Sign-in button to sign-in to your Google account.

Step 2: Under Create Archive button, select Gmail and then click Create Archive button to begin creating an archive containing all emails (including emails in Spam and Trash folders) in your Gmail account. You can also select other Google products like Calendar, YouTube, and Google Drive to create an archive of the data.

By default, .zip is the archive file format, and you can change it to .tgz or .tbz by clicking the change button next to archive file format option.

Step 3: Depending on the number of emails and other data, Google servers might take minutes to hours to prepare your archive containing your data. So please be patient and wait for the email from Google with link to download the archive. Also note that achieves larger than 2GB will be split into multiple zip files.

Once done, you’ll see an option to download the archive. Note that you can safely close the tab or turn off your PC when your data is being archived. Once the archive is ready, you’ll receive an email with link to download the archive.

If you are on Outlook.com, refer to our how to download Outlook.com emails, contacts and other data to your PC guide.