How can you back up your Gmail inbox and archive without spending a fortune or being a techie? Here are a few options that can help.
If you are like me, your Gmail (or other web-based email client) holds your life. I have had the same email address for almost seven years. Added to that is Google's 7557.455552 megabytes (and counting) of free storage. Suffice to say that I haven't deleted a whole lot over the years, and since Gmail is so easily searchable, I often email myself important files so that I have a backup no matter what computer I am using.
I have always recommended having a Gmail account to anyone who is looking for a job, because it allows you to have a professional email address that isn't dependent on your internet provider or your employer. But recently, 150,000 Gmail users logged in only to find that their entire inbox was empty. When I heard the news, I immediately imagined what it would be like to lose my entire inbox and archive. My stomach dropped and I suddenly felt a little sick. I had to log on as soon as possible, just to reassure myself that my data was still there.
The whole problem was a result of a bug that was quickly caught and the data was restored. And, even though it happened to less than 0.29 percent of users, still it was enough to make me realize how crucial it is to back up your email account.
Here are a few surefire ways to back up your Gmail account without spending a lot of money or being a techie:
- If you aren't opposed to paying for a service (eventually): Backupify – Backupify is allowing Gmail users to sign up for a free account for a year using the promo code savegmail. The service is easy to use. You set up an account, then log in and verify your Gmail and Google account information. After that, Backupify copies your archives and logs any new emails. It is super easy and the services even backs up your Google Docs, Twitter feed, Flickr stream and your Facebook account. If you aren't very technically inclined and don't want to have to think about backing up your data, this is the very best option.
- If you don't want to pay at all: Use Hotmail – With the recent attention being given to the spat between Google and Microsoft, this idea can sound a little shady, but it really isn't. Hotmail has been trying to woo Gmail users for some time, and they even have a tool called TrueSwitch, to make it really easy to move your inbox from Gmail to a new Hotmail account. Basically how it works is, you create a new Hotmail account, then go to TrueSwitch and enter your Gmail information. Microsoft does the rest. Depending on how much data you have in your Gmail account, it may take a few days, but eventually your entire inbox will be moved to the Hotmail server.
- For the techie, DIY backup fan: Thunderbird – One of my techie friends and I had coffee just yesterday and he was talking about backing up his Gmail account using this method. I laughed and referred to it as the “old school” inbox backup, because it uses email importing methods that were popular back in the days before Google took care of my email needs. Here's how it works: First, download a desktop email client. Sure, you could pay for outlook or whatever, but why bother? Mozilla offers one of the best clients, Thunderbird, for the low, low price of free.
Next, open your Gmail account and click Settings. Select Mail Settings, then the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. Enable POP for all your mail and be sure that you have it set so that Gmail keeps a copy on its server. After that, you can read over the Gmail instructions about how to configure your POP forwarding to Thunderbird. If reading all of that seems like too much work, Thunderbird has an automatic configuration option that can pick up your Gmail settings automatically most of the time if you just enter your user name and password. Once you have Thunderbird connected with your Gmail account, let it run for a day or two, and it will copy your entire inbox and store it in a special folder on your computer. After that, you just have to save the file to your back up device and you are all set. Just be sure to save a new copy of the file every couple of weeks to stay current.
There you have it, almost every way possible to back up your Gmail account. Are there some that I missed? Let me know in the comments.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for LogisticsJobsiteBlog, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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