The code is open source

For those interested, the code of the software is open source and available at https://code.google.com/p/gmail-backup-com/

This project contains the code of Gmail Backup (hosted at www.gmail-backup.com) licensed under GNU GPL v3.

I have a problem with getting labels.

Currently, Gmail Backup supports only [a-zA-Z0-9] characters in your labels. If you have *,/,+,' or any non ASCII characters in your labels then Gmail Backup fails.

If you want a quick fix then rename your labels.

See //www.gmail-backup.com/error-getting-labels

Good luck!

Can I transfer emails from gmail to my google apps mail account (associated to my own domain)?

Question details:

I have found your app on the gmail website, and I would like to ask, whether it can be used to access my gmail, then transfer all my mail to my google apps mail account (associated to my own domain).

Yes, you can. Read this post to get more details about how to do it.

The Gmail Backup site upgrade

We have just upgraded this site to a newer version of Drupal. If you experience any problems, let us know.

Your GMail Backup team.

GMail blackout - Google apologizes

Google's GMail was unavailable for several hours today. Problems occurred in early morning and it was not a local issue. GMail began to operate again around noon.

The last GMail's outage was in August 2008. Users did not have access to their mails for several of hours.

Did you already get your backup? I did! ;-)

You can find more details at:

GMail Backup 0.107

This is the next release of the GMail Backup tool - the ultimate one-click solution for doing backups of your GMail account.

Here is the changelog of this version:

  • The allowed characters in the filenames was even more restricted, now we allow only the folling chars:
    ()+-0123456789;=@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[]
    _abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
  • Fixed error in nExceptionMsg, reported for example here.

This version contains only bugfixes since the last release 0.106. It is strongly recommended to use this version.

IMAP & Gmail Labs note: If you are using the Gmail Labs, please make sure that you have enabled the IMAP access into the All Mails folder. You can check this in the Settings/Labels page of your Gmail account. Otherwise, Gmail Backup will tell you, that you are using "Unsupported language of Gmail"!

Download gmail-backup-0.107.exe

Download gmail-backup-0.107-linux.zip

Bug reporting: Please use our forum for reporting bugs and wishes. Thanks!

Linux note: Under Linux you will need the wxPython (http://wxpython.org) packages installed. It also requires the ctypes module, it should be included in the Python 2.5 distribution. For earlier versions of Python you can find the package in the repositories of your distribution.

Thank your for testing and bug reporting

Your GMail Backup Team

GMail Backup 0.106

This is the next release of the GMail Backup tool - the ultimate one-click solution for doing backups of your GMail account.

Here is the changelog of this version:

  • Filenames now uses only characters allowed by operating systems. It avoids many errors reported in our Forum or directly to us. Thank you for bugreporting!
  • Many other errors were fixed, for example [1], [2] and others.
  • Gmail Backup is now translated into Russian, Dutch and Danish. Special thanks to Alex Kachanov, Lode Vlayen and Lennart Christiansen. Can somebody test these localization? And is there somebody who would like to translate Gmail Backup into his language? Don't hesitate and write us.

This version contains only bugfixes since the last release 0.105. It is strongly recommended to use this version.

IMAP & Gmail Labs note: If you are using the Gmail Labs, please make sure that you have enabled the IMAP access into the All Mails folder. You can check this in the Settings/Labels page of your Gmail account. Otherwise, Gmail Backup will tell you, that you are using "Unsupported language of Gmail"!

Download gmail-backup-0.106.exe

Download gmail-backup-0.106-linux.zip

Bug reporting: Please use our forum for reporting bugs and wishes. Thanks!

Linux note: Under Linux you will need the wxPython (http://wxpython.org) packages installed. It also requires the ctypes module, it should be included in the Python 2.5 distribution. For earlier versions of Python you can find the package in the repositories of your distribution.

Thank your for testing and bug reporting

Your GMail Backup Team

GMail Backup 0.105

This is the next pre-final release of the GMail Backup tool - the ultimate one-click solution for doing backups of your GMail account.

Here is the changelog of this version:

  • The user interface was improved. Now it has the minimize button, so you can hide your backup process. If you want to see how many percent is done, you can simple look at the window title in the task list!
  • We tried to fix an "Invalid credentials" error during backup. Now, the Gmail Backup tries to reconnect if it occurs. Can somebody test this feature?
  • Internal structure of program was changed in many ways. The program now supports the ZIP archives to store messages. You can simply enter the path ending with .zip into the directory path and the program will add all messages into this archive.
  • The Gmail Backup now uses templates to generate the filename inside the backup directory. You can simply specify the template using the hashmark after the directory name. The variables in the template are substituted with values extracted from the stored emails.
    For example you can enter the directory like this:


    c:\Backup\honza.svec@gmail.com#$YEAR\$FROM\$YEAR$MONTH$DAY-$SUBJ

    You can also use templates with ZIP files. Currently, the following variables are supported:

    • $YEAR, $MONTH, $DAY
    • $HOUR, $MINUTE, $SECOND
    • $FROM, $SUBJ

    You can write the variable as $YEAR if you can use ${YEAR} if some alphanumeric characters follows immediately after the variable name.

  • Gmail Backup can be now easily localized into other languages. If you are familiar with software localization, look at the gmail-backup.pot file included in the installation directory. The installation comes with one localization into Czech.
  • Gmail Backup should be portable application. If you copy the content of installation directory to your flash-disc and create and empty file called gmail-backup-gui.cfg in this directory, the Gmail Backup will use files only in this directory (there are no hardcoded paths in the program).

This version contains major changes into the core of the program. It is considered less stable then the previous 0.104 version but it comes with many improvements. If you want so, please help us with testing it.

IMAP & Gmail Labs note: If you are using the Gmail Labs, please make sure that you have enabled the IMAP access into the All Mails folder. You can check this in the Settings/Labels page of your Gmail account. Otherwise, Gmail Backup will tell you, that you are using "Unsupported language of Gmail"!

Download gmail-backup-0.105.exe

Download gmail-backup-0.105-linux.zip

Bug reporting: Please use our forum for reporting bugs and wishes. Thanks!

Linux note: Under Linux you will need the wxPython (http://wxpython.org) packages installed. It also requires the ctypes module, it should be included in the Python 2.5 distribution. For earlier versions of Python you can find the package in the repositories of your distribution.

Thank your for testing and bug reporting

Your GMail Backup Team

GMail Backup 0.104

This is the seventth pre-final release of the GMail Backup tool - the ultimate one-click solution for doing backups of your GMail account.

Here is the changelog of this version:

  • We added support for German GMail - this GMail is not called GMail, it is called Google Mail. Users of German Google Mail can now do backups of their accounts using GMail Backup.
  • We tried to fix the UnicodeError reported here. Is there somebody using the non-ASCII labels who can test it and report the results?

This version is only a small bugfix release, so if you don't observe any problems you don't have to upgrade.

GMail Backup 0.103

This is the sixth pre-final release of the GMail Backup tool - the ultimate one-click solution for doing backups of your GMail account.

Here is the changelog of this version:

  • Due to my mistake, the 0.102 version still contained the 40 days period, so we fixed it and the new version is really 40-days-period free! [1]
  • Starting with this version you can specify the date range to restore. Simply specify the dates in "Since date" and "Before date" GUI fields and run "Restore". If you want to do a full restore, simply check the "Newest emails only" checkbox and click the "Restore". If you are using the command-line version, simply use

    gmail-backup.exe restore dir user@gmail.com password 20070621 20080101

    where the dates specifies the since_date and before_date options.

    Can somebody here do a thorough test of this feature?

  • The reported OverflowError should be fixed. [2].
  • We added the "local" exception checks. If the error occur in the code that parses the email, it only prints the traceback and continues with processing of the rest.
  • We use UTF-8 encoded labels in labels.txt. If you have labels with non-ASCII characters, you should do a full backup!

It is very recommended to upgrade.

Syndicate content