Downloading or backing up g-mail messages?

[Captcha]

I've just been reading some horror stories about Google shutting people out of their accounts for various transgressions, and it's made me realize that I store a lot of pretty important e-mails on my Google account.

So I'd like to back them up/download them. I can think of tedious ways to do this (forwarding them to a non g-mail account, etc.) but I've got hundreds (thousands?) of e-mails on there and it'd be great if there was an easier way than to hit each one manually.

So... is there? I'm thinking of something where I could do the equivalent of selecting a bunch of e-mails (or, better, a bunch of g-mail folders) and 'drag and drop' them to my desktop. Anything like that?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[BySharonNelson]

I cannot think of a program that does that. I regularly back up my files onto a flash drive because I've had my hard drive crash a few times but I don't really keep anything that important in my e mail. Good luck, be sure and let us know if you find a program that does that.

[Jamesaritchie]

I know little about such programs, but it's easy enough to download another e-mail program and link it to Gmail. I use MS Outlook for this. This means all my e-mails are stored on Google, and are also downloaded to MS Outlook.

You can also do this with Windows Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird.

[Captcha]

Oh, brilliant! Thunderbird seems to be doing the job. It seems to stop after every 500 or so messages, but I just tell it to download more, and it does. Damn, though - there are thousands of them! I'm VERY glad I'm not doing this manually!

Thanks!

[Adagio]

I've just been reading some horror stories about Google shutting people out of their accounts for various transgressions, and it's made me realize that I store a lot of pretty important e-mails on my Google account.



Really? That's scary. And what kind of transgressions are we talking about? Misbehaving in gmail, not saying thank you or a proper farewell? I stored some documents there and I'd be devastated if shut out ... thanks for the warning. I'll have to think of another way to back-up (I started Dropbox), I use the flash drive, and even a CD.

[BigWords]

And what kind of transgressions are we talking about?

Your guess is as good as mine - I've had two former accounts killed, which also bars access to things linked to the account (YouTube, Blogger, etc.) so i keep copies of everything I have on external storage now just to have a backup. I also have zipped files when the material is really important and I need to make sure it has not been modified accidentally since I created it.

[Adagio]

I see. Well, it doesn't sound nice of the G people. Besides documents, I receive notifications from another site I subscribed to. I will behave.

[Captcha]

And what kind of transgressions are we talking about?

The ones I heard about more recently were related to people starting to use the Google+ social networking site. Something about age limits being applied strangely... so you need to be 18+ to use Google+, and if people lied about that to get access, they didn't just get booted out of Google+, they lost all their Google accounts? Or something about using 'false identities', including, I assume, established pseudonyms - if you use one on Google+ and they find out, they'll shut down all your Google accounts.

I'm okay on those two, but it's got me a bit sensitive about what other rules I might be accidentally breaking, and how draconian the consequences could be...

[Adagio]

The ones I heard about more recently were related to people starting to use the Google+ social networking site.

I'm okay on those two, but it's got me a bit sensitive about what other rules I might be accidentally breaking, and how draconian the consequences could be...

Aha, I see now. I'm not in Google+ and I'm over 18, not hiding! But I'll be more, how should I say, more aware of possible missteps.

Thank you.

Adagio

[Tirjasdyn]

If I have an important email, I print it out or print it to pdf.

[Captcha]

Tirasdyn, I e-publish, so there's quite a bit of important stuff going back and forth - MS revisions, etc. It would be a LOT of paper if I printed it all. I do generally save the attachments, but it's a lot easier to keep track of versions if I go from the e-mail, and that way I get the attached notes, too.

I thought about printing, but... it'd be a lot.

[Tirjasdyn]

Tirasdyn, I e-publish, so there's quite a bit of important stuff going back and forth - MS revisions, etc. It would be a LOT of paper if I printed it all. I do generally save the attachments, but it's a lot easier to keep track of versions if I go from the e-mail, and that way I get the attached notes, too.

I thought about printing, but... it'd be a lot.

That's why I print a lot of stuff to PDF, it's not stuck in a program (Thunderbird can be very difficult to get stuff out of it if it ever goes away). All my pay stubs come via email as well as most of my tax info, so yeah, way too much to just print. There are plenty of free pdf applications that let you print to pdf and just save the file in a folder you designate.

Also I burn dvds and a few back up drive. I keep very little in gmail except my contact list and I back up that all the time.

As for account banning, it's actually illegal in the US to gather personal information from minors with out a parent's consent and even with consent that can be iffy to prove. Most parents I've dealt with (probably me too but I have had to yet) will pull the minor card if the kid does something wrong, like use the adults credit card. Some companies strictly differentiate child and adult accounts, but a lot of kids and parents just fake a birthday so the child can have an adult account. Other company's, such as Google and Facebook just don't allow it. Google not at all, as far as Google profiles go (they don't care about individual accounts just they fully integrated ones). Facebook doesn't allow children under 13.

This is where you get bit in the rear as a company when you have a child who knows more about tech than the parent...a parent will have the child call customer service and set up their own account. Then when bullying, phishing, over use of a credit card, and some interesting sexual language occur the parent will be outraged that no one was policing this, or not policing it enough. The parents should have been policing it, the tools are set up so they but they turned a blind eye and will blame the company rather than look stupid to their kids.