Gmail is a very popular email service that is usually all done online, but sometimes you might want to download an email from Gmail so that it’s offline. And today, that’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do.
There are actually 4 different ways of downloading emails from Gmail, and each option is good for different things.
Prefer to watch a video about how to download emails from Gmail? Click here.
Gmail Offline – If you just want to download some emails from Gmail so that you can access your emails while you don’t have an internet connection, Gmail actually has a really cool feature that allows you to save the last 90 days of emails to your computer, and then access them offline within Gmail.
This option is really great if you just want access to your emails when you’re offline as you will be able to view your emails with all of Gmail’s nice features really easily. Click here to learn all about how to enable and use Gmail offline.
Downloading an eml file – If you want to export a specific email out of Gmail and save it on your computer or open it in a different email program, downloading an eml file will be perfect.
It will save a file on your computer containing the email’s content, any attachments attached to the email, and all the other details like the subject and who it’s from. I’ll show you how to do that later on in this article. (Click here to jump straight down to where I show you how to do that.)
But something you should keep in mind is that you do need to use a different email app to open an eml file so it can be a little bit complicated to use.
Saving the email as a PDF – If you’d rather download an email to your computer in a simpler way, downloading it as a pdf can be a great option.
This method is great for things like saving email newsletters as it will save the message exactly how it looks into a pdf document that can very easily be opened on any device.
But it won’t include any email attachments so it will really only be good for certain uses. I’ll show you how to download your emails from Gmail as pdf files later on. (Click here to jump straight down to where I show you how to do that.)
Downloading emails as an archive – This last option is a bit of a different one, if you want to download one big file to your computer that contains all your emails inside it, downloading as an archive could be the way to go.
This option obviously won’t be very good if you just want to download a specific email. But if you want to move all your emails to a different email service or app, or you want to have a big backup of all your emails on your computer, this will be the way to go.
I’ll show you how to do that at the end of this article. (Click here to jump straight down to where I show you how.)
How To Download An Email From Gmail (As An Eml File)
To Download an email from Gmail as an Eml file, all you need to do is go into Gmail and open the email you want to download.
And then click on the three dots in the top right-hand corner.
And then, in the menu that appears, click on “Download message”.
Then, the email will download to your computer as an Eml file! How simple was that?
Now that the file is saved to your computer, if you double click on it, it should just open up in whatever email app you have installed on your computer (eg: Microsoft Outlook).
How To Save An Email As A PDF In Gmail
The process for saving an email as a PDF is a bit more complicated as Gmail doesn’t actually have a built in way to do it, but once it’s saved, it will be easier to open than an Eml file because you won’t need to worry about using an email app.
To save your email as a PDF, you will need to be using Gmail in the Google Chrome web browser (click here to install it if you’re not using it already), and then you’ll need to go to the Chrome web store and install this Chrome extension by clicking “Add to Chrome”.
You’ll then see a popup message asking if you’re sure you want to add it to Chrome and you’ll need to click “Add Extension” in order to proceed.
Then, the extension will begin installing and once it’s finished, you’ll be taken straight back to Gmail and you’ll see this new popup asking you to choose your settings.
If you want to have the PDFs automatically saved to a cloud storage service like Google Drive, you can enable the one you want here. But to keep things nice and simple, I’m just going to leave it set to the default option (Downloadable PDF).
Then, once you’re happy with your decision, go ahead and click “Save settings”.
Now that it’s installed and set up, open the email in Gmail that you want to download and click on the “Download” icon in the cluster of icons across the top of the screen.
And then, in the menu that appears, click “Save to PDF”.
The first time you do this, you will be greeted with a message prompting you to create an account.
You will need to create a cloudHQ account in order to do this, but it’s very simple to do, and it’s really just a matter of connecting your Google account, so go ahead and click on the “Create Account” button to begin creating your account.
Then, a popup will appear like this asking you to choose your Google Account.
If you only have one Google account, just click on it to complete the process, but if you have multiple Google Accounts, you’ll need to choose the account that the email you want to download is in.
Then it will ask you if you want to allow cloudHQ to access your Google account and you’ll need to click “Allow” to complete the process.
Then, once that’s done, the popup will disappear and you’ll finally be able to actually download your email as a PDF by going back to your email in Gmail and clicking the “Download” icon.
And then, in the menu that appears, click “Save to PDF”.
Then, you’ll see a message that looks something like this to let you know that it’s preparing the PDF.
And then after a matter of seconds, the message will disappear and your email will download as a PDF! Yay!
Now that you’ve got it all setup, the next time you want to download an email as a pdf, you will only have to do this quick and simple process. It’s just setting it up that takes quite a bit of effort.
How To Export All Emails From Gmail
If you want to download a backup of all your emails in one big file, you’ll need to go into your Google account management area by going to https://myaccount.google.com/.
And then you’ll need to click on “Data & personalization” in the left-hand menu.
Then, you’ll need to scroll about halfway down the page until you find “Download your data”, and then click on “Download your data”.
Now, by default, it will be going to export all the data that’s in your Google account. Your emails, your Google Drive files, your photos, your location data, and much more.
And that’s fine if you want to download all that, but as you just want to download all your emails, the easiest thing to do is to click “Deselect all” to untick all the boxes.
And then scroll down the long list until you find Gmail, and then tick the box next to it to select it.
Then, scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click “Next step”.
Then, you’ll need to choose the delivery method that Google will use to send you the file.
Because exports like this can end up being very large, Google will need some time to put it all together. As you’re just exporting emails, you will probably be able to download your export within a matter of minutes. But larger exports can even take a matter of days to be ready.
That’s why, rather than making you sit here watching it, Google will get to work preparing it, and then send it to you via your chosen delivery method once it’s ready.
The default delivery method is “Send download link via email” which is the one I’d recommend if you want to download it to your computer because it just makes things easy. But if you want to save it to a cloud storage service, there are options to have it uploaded directly to certain services.
You can also choose the frequency of the backup if you want to receive a fresh export of your emails every two months for a year. But I’m just going to leave it set to the default (export once) which will be the best option for most people.
The last options you need to choose before the exporting can begin are the file type and file size. You’ll want to just leave the file type set to the default (.zip). But I’d recommend changing the file size to 50GB.
This doesn’t mean that the file will be 50GB, it’s just the maximum file size. And I recommend setting it to 50GB because if you leave it set to the default (2GB), and you have 5GB worth of emails, the export will be split into multiple different files which can be quite annoying.
But, if you set the maximum file size to 50GB, and you have 5GB worth of emails, you will just get one big 5GB export file which will be much more convenient.
Now that you’ve configured all the different options, you can go ahead and click “Create export”.
You’ll then see this message letting you know that the export is in progress, and now all you can do is wait until you receive an email letting you know it’s been completed.
This can take quite a while if you have a lot of emails, but as I’m doing this in a demo account that doesn’t have many emails in it, mine was completed in under a minute.
But regardless of how long it takes for your export to be completed, once it’s ready, you’ll receive an email just like this:
When you do, open it up and click on “Download your files” to download your export.
Then, just to verify it’s you, you’ll need to enter your Google account password and click “Next”.
And then, a zip file containing all your emails should instantly begin downloading.
It could take a while to download if you have a lot of emails, but once it’s downloaded, you will need to open the zip file to get the export file out of it.
If you don’t know how to open a zip file, you can click here to learn how on a Windows computer, click here to learn how on a Chromebook, or here to learn how on a Mac.
Then, inside the zip file, there will be a folder called “Takeout”.
And inside that folder will be a folder called “Mail”.
And inside that folder will be a file named “All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox”.
This .mbox file contains all the emails that are in your Gmail account, and you will now be able to import the file into any email app or service you like.
And that’s it! I think I’ve now finally covered all the different ways you can download an email from Gmail with step by step instructions on how you can do each of them.
