How to export Gmail with Google Takeout and open the .mbox file

Before you start

• Takeout exports whole labels, not date ranges. To export only some e-mails, put them under a label in Gmail first and export that label.
• Preparing the export takes from a few minutes to a few days, depending on its size. Most people get it the same day.
• On a work or school account, the administrator may have turned Takeout off, and some data may not be available.
• Encrypted messages stay encrypted in the export.

Step 1: create the export

1. Go to takeout.google.com and sign in.
2. Every Google product you use is already ticked. Clear them all with Deselect all, then tick Mail.
3. To export only some labels, click the button under Mail (All Mail data included) and choose the labels.
4. Click Next step.
5. Choose how to get it (a download link by e-mail, or Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Box), Export once, the file type .zip, and a size. Then click Create export.

Exports larger than the size you choose are split into several archives. Choosing the largest size, 50 GB, keeps the number of files down.

Step 2: download and unzip

1. When the export is ready, Google sends you an e-mail. Click Download archive. You may be asked to sign in again. If you chose Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Box, the e-mail links to the folder there instead: download the .zip files from it.
2. Open the .zip file: double-click it on a Mac, or right-click it and choose Extract All on Windows.
3. Inside, open the Takeout folder, then Mail. The mailbox is the .mbox file there, for example All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox, or one file per label you chose.

The download links expire after about 7 days, and each archive can be downloaded 5 times. After that, create a new export.

Step 3: open the .mbox file

1. Open the MBOX viewer.
2. Choose the .mbox file (not the .zip), or drop it on the page. A bar shows the progress while it is read.
3. Every message is listed, newest first. Search by sender, recipient or subject, or pick a Gmail label.
4. Click a subject to read the message. Save it as a PDF or .eml, save its attachments, make one PDF of the messages listed, or save a spreadsheet of them.

The PDFs made here keep the words and paragraphs, not the layout or pictures, and some scripts (Chinese, Arabic and Indian scripts, for example) and emoji print as “?”. For one message as it looks, open it and click Print or save as PDF.

Mailboxes of several gigabytes work, because the file is read a piece at a time. On a recent MacBook Pro, a 5 GB mailbox of 150,000 messages was listed in about 10 seconds. Older computers take longer, and phones manage smaller mailboxes. The mailbox is read on your device and never uploaded.

Labels in the export

Google keeps each message’s labels in a line of the message called X-Gmail-Labels. Google notes that mail programs don’t recognise it, so labels usually disappear when an .mbox is imported elsewhere. The MBOX viewer reads it: pick a label to see just those messages, and the spreadsheet has a column for them.

Moving the mail to another program

Thunderbird (with the ImportExportTools NG add-on) and Apple Mail (File → Import Mailboxes) import .mbox files. Outlook doesn’t. To move a few messages, save them as .eml from the viewer and open them in any mail program, or read them later in the EML viewer.

If something looks wrong

• The viewer can’t read the file. You probably chose the .zip archive. Unzip it first and choose the .mbox file inside Takeout → Mail.
• The export came as several .zip files. Each holds part of your data. Open each one and look for a Mail folder.
• Mail isn’t in the list of products. On a work or school account, the administrator controls Takeout. Ask them.
• The download link stopped working. It expires after about 7 days or 5 downloads. Create a new export.