- \n
- Reasons to Export<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n
- User Level Export<\/strong><\/a>\n
- Why Default Fails<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n
- Admin Enable Takeout<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n
- Use Google Vault<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n
- Data Export Kit<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n
- Custom Script<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n
- Org Setting Export<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n
- Conclusion<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n
- FAQ<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
It is not that getting MBOX out of G Suite is impossible, but it is not straightforward either.<\/p>\n
That is why, many users report difficulty attempting the process without external guidance. So we provide the correct procedure within this write-up. Here, we will teach you how to use the default process and introduce you to a utility that cuts down on the majority of manual work.<\/p>\n
Let us start by understanding why users may choose MBOX over other types of formats.<\/p>\n
Reasons to Export Gmail Emails to MBOX in Business Environments<\/h2>\n
Businesses are constantly evolving and they can’t let digital chokeholds block their communication channels.<\/p>\n
However, those operating on a tight budget may not have enough resources to get a perpetual subscription model style archives.<\/p>\n
Moreover, deleting those precious client conversations is out of the question. So, the only possible path left is to back up offline and clear out the inbox for new mail.<\/p>\n
In some situations, regulatory bodies may require a copy of email communication. Or the organization may have to maintain a separate offline copy for other compliance purposes. These are just some of the reasons the actual list is as large as there are businesses, we are not here to question the genuineness but to provide a way to fulfill this requirement. So for that, you can try out the basic manual method steps which are described below.<\/p>\n
Export Gmail Emails to MBOX at the User level<\/h2>\n
STEP 1:<\/p>\n
Login to the Takeout service via the official URL: https:\/\/takeout.google.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n
By Default Google Selects all of the different services, so click on Deselect all.<\/p>\n
Scroll till you find Mail.<\/p>\n
Mark the Checkbox next to it.<\/p>\n
Optional: Click on the Multiple formats button to see that Emails are exported out in MBOX format.<\/p>\n
Scroll down and click on Next Step.<\/p>\n
STEP 2:<\/p>\n
A new set of options opens first of which is selecting destination. This is how you decide where you will receive the Google Workspace data.<\/p>\n
You can continue with the default \u201cSend download link via email\u201d or expand the transfer bar to select any other option like:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Add to Drive<\/li>\n
- Add to Dropbox<\/li>\n
- Add to OneDrive<\/li>\n
- Add to Box<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Choose the Frequency<\/p>\n
Select the File type.
\nGoogle Takeout does not release emails in pure MBOX format instead they would be compressed in either .zip or .tgz so choose the one that works best for you.<\/p>\nPick a File Size. Options include 1GB, 2GB, 4 GB, 10 GB, and 50 GB that zip will automatically cut off at that threshold and start with a new one. This will repeat until all the data is covered.<\/p>\n
At last click on Create Export.<\/p>\n
In case the MBOX is just a placeholder format and your real intent was to get Personal Storage Tables then you can follow this guide on how to export G Suite email to PST<\/a> and complete your requirements.<\/p>\n
This may seem like the most cost-effective way to get the data in the MBOX format but it has many apparent drawbacks and equally.<\/p>\n
Why the Default Method Falls Short?<\/h3>\n
The first and most severe drawback is that it may be unavailable. This is especially true in a business environment where admins can disable user-level Takeout requests. So only organization-wide single take-out requests can be made.<\/p>\n
Another limitation is the lack of filtering capability, so this becomes an all-or-none type of export<\/p>\n
Internal limits on the number of requests and the high failure rate of said requests are strong reasons to not choose this route.<\/p>\n
If you are an admin and want to enable Takeout feature for your organization follow the guidelines given below.<\/p>\n
How Admins Can Enable Takeout for Users<\/h3>\n
- \n
- Sign in to Google Admin Console(GAC) as an super administrator.<\/li>\n
- Follow path Menu > Data > Data import & export > Google Takeout.<\/li>\n
- Click User Access to Takeout for Google services.<\/li>\n
- In the \u201cServices without an individual admin control\u201d section, click Edit.<\/li>\n
- Choose Allow for everyone under Gmail service and Save.<\/li>\n
- Optional settings include setting up Takeout for OU and Groups.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Now that it’s clear that Takeout is not a good option let’s see the best alternative available in the market.<\/p>\n
Use Google Vault and Get Google Workspace Emails in MBOX Format<\/h3>\n
Pre-requisites:<\/p>\n
Super Admin rights.
\nTurn off Auto-Delete.
\nEnable message storage.<\/p>\nSteps to Use Google Vault to get Gmail data in MBOX format:<\/p>\n
Purchase Google Vault licenses (these are separate licenses)<\/p>\n
Add Google Vault licenses to users whose Gmail data you want in MBOX format.<\/p>\n
You can ask users to add the Google Vault app by expanding Vault visibility to all users.<\/p>\n
In case the super admin is busy Vault export can be done by privileged users as well. However, admin still needs to assign authorization for this.<\/p>\n
Visit vault.google.com.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Login and stay with Default Retention:<\/li>\n
- Under Vault’s Retention menu.<\/li>\n
- Pick Gmail service.<\/li>\n
- Set a Retention Period and corresponding purge period.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Use Google’s Data Export Kit<\/h3>\n
Step 1. Make a Data Export Request<\/p>\n
- \n
- Log in to Google Admin console with super administrator privileges<\/li>\n
- Expand the left pane Menu > Data > Data import & export > Data Export.<\/li>\n
- Press \u201cSet up new export\u201d button.<\/li>\n
- Type the name; pick \u201cExport all user data.\u201d keep \u201cContinuous export\u201d unchecked.<\/li>\n
- Under Destination pick the closest Google-provided Cloud bucket as per your organization’s location (US, Europe, or No Preference).<\/li>\n
- Press \u201cStart export.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Step 2. Fetch the Exported Data<\/p>\n
Note: The following steps can’t be done right after export creation. You need to wait anywhere from 48-hours to 14-days for the download to activate.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Before continuing check whether or not Google Cloud is on for your admin account. If not then toggle switch it on.<\/li>\n
- Once the export is complete you will receive a mail on the admin email used to conduct the export. Click on that link to continue or login to the Data Export tool with the same admin email and hop on to the \u201cView archive\u201d section.<\/li>\n
- There should be a review report accompanying the export data with one of three result.\n
- \n
- \u201cFailed,\u201d<\/li>\n
- \u201cComplete with errors,\u201d<\/li>\n
- \u201cComplete\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Use the Cloud portal to find individual user files or gsutil for extracting all email items together.<\/li>\n
- Finally decompress the .zip and extract the user\u2019s Gmail data.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Build a Custom Script to Download Emails in MBOX via Gmail API<\/h4>\n
- \n
- First, build a new Google Cloud Console or modify an existing one.<\/li>\n
- Enable the Gmail API<\/li>\n
- Download your OAuth credentials file as ‘credentials.json’<\/li>\n
- Install required libraries:\n
pip install google-api-python-client google-auth-httplib2 google-auth-oauthlib<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n
- Run the script<\/li>\n
- The first time you run it, it will open a browser window for authentication<\/li>\n
- The script will download all emails to ‘gmail_backup.mbox’<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
import base64\r\nimport os\r\nimport pickle\r\nfrom googleapiclient.discovery import build\r\nfrom google_auth_oauthlib.flow import InstalledAppFlow\r\nfrom google.auth.transport.requests import Request\r\nfrom email import message_from_bytes\r\nimport mailbox\r\n# Set up OAuth 2.0 scopes\r\nSCOPES = ['https:\/\/www.googleapis.com\/auth\/gmail.readonly']\r\ndef authenticate_gmail_api():\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0creds = None\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0if os.path.exists('token.pickle'):\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0with open('token.pickle', 'rb') as token:\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0creds = pickle.load(token)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0if not creds or not creds.valid:\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0if creds and creds.expired and creds.refresh_token:\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0creds.refresh(Request())\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0else:\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0'credentials.json', SCOPES)\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0creds = flow.run_local_server(port=0)\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0with open('token.pickle', 'wb') as token:\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0pickle.dump(creds, token)\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0return build('gmail', 'v1', credentials=creds)\r\ndef download_all_emails_to_mbox(service, user_id='me', mbox_file='gmail_backup.mbox'):\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0# Create an mbox file\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0mbox = mailbox.mbox(mbox_file)\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0# Get list of all message IDs\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0response = service.users().messages().list(userId=user_id, maxResults=500).execute()\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0messages = response.get('messages', [])\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0# Continue fetching if there are more messages\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0while 'nextPageToken' in response:\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0page_token = response['nextPageToken']\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0response = service.users().messages().list(userId=user_id,\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0pageToken=page_token,\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0maxResults=500).execute()\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0messages.extend(response.get('messages', []))\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0print(f\"Found {len(messages)} messages so far...\")\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0total_messages = len(messages)\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0print(f\"Downloading {total_messages} emails...\")\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0# Download each message and add to mbox\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0for i, msg in enumerate(messages):\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0if i % 100 == 0:\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0print(f\"Downloaded {i}\/{total_messages} emails...\")\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0# Get the message\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0message = service.users().messages().get(userId=user_id,\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0id=msg['id'],\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0format='raw').execute()\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0# Decode the raw message\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0msg_bytes = base64.urlsafe_b64decode(message['raw'])\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0# Convert to email message and add to mbox\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0email_message = message_from_bytes(msg_bytes)\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0mbox.add(email_message)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0mbox.close()\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0print(f\"All emails downloaded to {mbox_file}\")\r\ndef main():\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0service = authenticate_gmail_api()\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0download_all_emails_to_mbox(service)\r\nif __name__ == '__main__':\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0main()<\/pre>\nInstead of struggling with the script and endlessly fixing bugs and errors you can choose a tool that does it all for you. The entire process is wrapped in a easy-to-use GUI platform.<\/p>\n
Export Gmail Emails to MBOX in an Organization Setting<\/h4>\n
None is better than what the SysTools G Suite Export Tool<\/a> <\/strong>offers. The fully GUI-based tool can help in getting the Gmail MBOX data even those who are not from a technical background.<\/p>\n
Download Now<\/a> Purchase Now<\/a><\/p>\n
Accurate selection options at Workload, Date, and User levels allow admins to only pull the data they require.<\/p>\n
- User Level Export<\/strong><\/a>\n
![\"Select](\"https:\/\/systoolskart.com\/imgp\/google-workspace-export\/v3\/mbox-1.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Apply](\"https:\/\/systoolskart.com\/imgp\/google-workspace-export\/v3\/mbox-3.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"User](\"https:\/\/systoolskart.com\/imgp\/google-workspace-export\/v3\/resources-window.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Start](\"https:\/\/systoolskart.com\/imgp\/google-workspace-export\/v3\/start-export.png\")
<\/p>\n