How to Download Your Gmail Emails to Your Computer

Gmail provides over 400 million people with email access for free. While convenient, many users have no idea how to download Gmail emails to their computer. There was a time when Google did not allow for this to be done easily, but now, you can download all of your pertinent emails quickly and easily.

Create an Archive

A built-in feature that Google introduced in 2013. Archiving allows you to download all of your emails quickly and easily. Let’s see how this works.

1. Log into your Gmail account.
2. Click your profile picture and click Account.
3. Scroll to the Account Tools
4. Click Download data.
5. Select Gmail.
6. Click next.
7. Choose file type and delivery method.
8. Click Create archive.

Now, you’ll receive notification when your download is ready. If your email data exceeds 2 GB worth of space, it will be split among multiple zips and be available for download.

In total, archiving will take 24 – 48 hours to process and be made available. Sometimes, depending on how much mail your account contains, you’ll be able to archive all of your mails even faster.

If you feel that there must be an easier way to download your emails or a way that is more functional, the next option may work better for you.

POP Backup

This method requires you to have a mail client on your computer. Most operating systems have their own mail client that you just need to setup.

First, you need to ensure that your mail client is directed to Google’s servers. This will require configuration of your client. Once in your email client, you’ll want to navigate to your pop 3 settings and plug in the following information:

• Server: pop.gmail.com
• Port: 995

You’ll also need to input your email address and password.

Note: You will not be able to access your email at this point.

Now, you’ll need to alter some of your Gmail settings to be allowed to download email with your client.

1. Sign into your account.
2. Click the Gear Icon > Settings.
3. Click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP
4. Choose Enable POP for all mail.
5. Click Save Changes.

That will be all that you need to do to be able to enter your account using an email client.

From this point, you’ll want to open your email client and try to connect to your account. If connection fails, make sure that you have the right username, password, POP server and POP port entered into your client.

You may notice that a lot of mails are not being downloaded. During your initial connection, all of your data will begin to be downloaded. This download comes through in chunks and will take quite some time to finish depending on the extent of emails that you currently have on your account.

Keep in mind that downloading mail to another computer can only occur one time. After the initial download, the mail will be flagged so that it’s not erroneously downloaded again in the future.