Back Up Your Gmail Account

This article teaches you how to download an archive file that contains all of your Gmail information to your computer. Unfortunately, you can't back up your Gmail account from within the mobile app.

Steps

  1. Open your Google Account page. All of your Google account settings and information are stored here.
    • If you aren't signed into your Google account, click Sign in in the top-right corner of the screen, enter your email address and password, and click Sign in.
  2. Click Personal info & privacy. It's in the middle-center of the page.
  3. Click Control your content. You'll see this option under the "Personal info & privacy" heading in the far-left side of the screen.
  4. Click Create Archive. It's below the "Download your data" section on the right side of the page.
  5. Select each aspect of your Google account you wish to back up. By default, everything here is selected.
    • Even if you don't want to download everything, make sure the switch to the right of "Mail" is selected before continuing.
    • You'll see a downward-facing arrow to the right of "All mail"--clicking it will allow you to choose between downloading all of your mail and selecting specific labels to download only emails with those labels attached.
  6. Click Next. It's at the bottom of the screen.
  7. Make sure ".zip" is selected. You'll see this option below the "File type" heading near the top of this page.
    • ZIP files can be opened on nearly any computer simply by double-clicking them. They also take up less space than the other file options in the "File type" menu.
  8. Click the box under the "Archive size (max)" heading. Doing so will prompt a drop-down menu with different maximum download sizes:
    • 1GB
    • 2GB
    • 4GB
    • 10GB
    • 50GB
  9. Click a download size. Anything larger than your selected file size will carry over into a new file.
    • For example, if you choose "4GB" but your file is 6GB, you'll end up downloading two files: a 4GB file and a 2GB file.
  10. Click the box beneath the "Delivery method" heading. You'll see several ways of receiving your backup file here:
    • Send download link via email - Receive a link for the download file in your current Gmail address. Clicking the link will prompt your file to download.
    • Add to Drive - Place the download file in Google Drive. Doing so will take up Google Drive storage.
    • Add to Dropbox - Place the download file in your connected Dropbox account (if you have one).
    • Add to OneDrive - Place the download file in your connected OneDrive account (if you have one).
  11. Click a delivery method. Keep in mind your maximum archive size when you do this, since your download file might be too large for cloud storage.
  12. Click Create archive. Doing so will begin backing up your Gmail account to your selected file type.
    • Depending on how many emails you have, this process may take hours (or even days) to complete.
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