How to use Outlook to backup your Gmail account

32 Replies

With all the recent talk of Gmail accounts being deleted, this is a very helpful guide that you can use to easily backup your Gmail.
To use your Gmail e-mail account in Outlook, you must first make sure POP3 support is enabled in Gmail, and then you can add it to Outlook.

  • Log in to your Gmail account
  • At the top of any Gmail page, click Settings
  • In the Mail Settings window, click Forwarding and POP
  • In the POP Download section, select Enable POP or all mail or Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on
  • Click Save Settings.

Next, we’re going to configure Outlook:

  • In Outlook, on the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts
  • Click Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next
  • Click POP3, and then click Next.

Under User Information, do the following:

  • In the Your Name box, type your full name the way you want it to appear to other people
  • In the E-mail Address box, type your e-mail user name followed by @gmail.com

Under Server Information, do the following:

  • In the Incoming mail server (POP3) box, type pop.gmail.com
  • In the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) box, type smtp.Gmail.com

Under Logon Information, do the following:

  • In the User Name box, type your full e-mail address, including @gmail.com
  • In the Password box, type your password
  • Select the Remember password check box

Click More Settings

  • On the General tab, under Mail Account, type Gmail
  • Click the Outgoing Server tab, and then select the My outgoing server (SMTP)
  • requires authentication check box
  • Select Use same settings as my incoming mail server
  • Click the Advanced tab, and then under Server Port Numbers for both Incoming server (POP3) and Outgoing server (SMTP), select the This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL) check boxes
  • Change the Outgoing server (SMTP) port number to 465
  • The Incoming server (POP3) port number should change automatically to 995 when you select the This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL) check box
  • Click OK

To verify that your account is working, click Test Account Settings. If there is missing or incorrect information, such as your password, you will be prompted to supply or correct it. Make sure your computer is connected to the Internet.

  • Click Next, and then click Finish.

Notes

* Do not select the Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA) check box.
* Unless specified by Gmail, all server and address entries are typed in lowercase letters.

(via Microsoft)

Now, you’ll want to export all those emails you just downloaded into one singly, tidy file:

1. On the File menu, click Import and Export.

2. Click Export to a file, and then click Next.

3. In the list, click Personal Folder File (.pst), and then click Next.

4. Click the folder that contains the messages you want to back up. If the folder contains a subfolder that you want to include, select the Include Subfolders check box, and then click Next.

5. Under Save exported file as, click Browse, and then specify a name and location for your backup file, for example, Mail Backup.

6. If you back up a .pst file that you have backed up to before, click one of the following:

Replace duplicates with items exported Existing data will be overwritten with the information in the file being exported.

Allow duplicate items to be created Existing data will not be overwritten, and duplicate information will be added to the backup file.

Do not export duplicate items Existing data will be kept, and the duplicate information in the folder will not be copied to the backup file.

7. Click Finish.

(via Microsoft)

Now, go to Box.net, and set up a free online storage space (1GB is free, and 15GB is for a nominal fee). In all likelihood, your .pst email backup file is less than 1GB. Simply upload this file to your Box.net account. Your Gmail backup is now safe and you can now forever access it and load it into Outlook the event of a horrific Google crash.



32 thoughts on “How to use Outlook to backup your Gmail account”

  1. Anonymous

    Good design![url=http://adbmywep.com/kawm/nksb.html]My homepage[/url] | [url=http://znwhzgez.com/gywk/znzw.html]Cool site[/url]

    Like

    Reply ↓
  4. Anonymous

    Sorry man but this is silly.. Google won’t ever have a ‘horrific crash’ and have never lost anyones data yet. This is a waste of time, uploading your 1gb .pst file (or however big it is) to that site wil take forever for people using domestic adsl connections with low upload speeds..My 2 pennies – dont waste your time. Use gmail for what it is, a free reliable external mail provider.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  6. David

    Just be careful doing this. Outlook PST files have a size limit of 2GB. This means that if you actually have more than 2gb of emails on gmail, or you are importing into a pst that already has emails, you could break your PST file. And that means having to spend hours running pst2gb and scanpst in order to get it back, and possibly losing data on the way.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  7. Anonymous

    Hi, Downloading 2GB of information with pop is not very practical. One small crack in connection and you’ll start all over again. I used better method, I bought myself a account in FastMAIL with enchanced account. And now I have always working backup copy of my GMail account + all the other funny things you can do with FastMAIL. I was glad I came to think of this, never had such and easy config.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  8. Anonymous

    Just a comment to voice my appreciation – Thanks so much for posting the instructions on how to use outlook to back up gmail. I am completely computer illiterate and had been trying to configure my gmail account for ages – really appreciate the help!

    Like

    Reply ↓
  10. Anonymous

    At least I needed to click send/receive in Outlook several times to get all my emails. Outlook seems to process POP updates in ~400 email batches. – Jarno

    Like

    Reply ↓
  11. christina

    Does your process work for archived email that is not in the inbox? I seem to remember that when I tried something like this, any email that had been given a label and removed from Gmail’s Inbox does not get downloaded to Outlook.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  15. Anonymous

    Thank you very much! I used your guidelines to set up my Outlook account. Now that I am already at it, I will also do a backup of my Gmail account.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  19. Anonymous

    I was able to configure outlook and thats the sweet thing about your instructions.There is a lot of crap on the internet which never helped me to configure and use the Outlook.Thanks.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  21. braunsky

    well – time tells – Outlook Express either never had the export to file feature or has since lost it. (yes I know you said outlook but ….)

    Like

    Reply ↓
  22. Ahren

    That is a great tutorial. Thanks. A couple things though. – with the free version of box.net you only can upload files up to 10mb even though your total storage is 1gb.- right now I have my Pop3 email account set to receive into my gmail account. Does this method you describe grab the mail from that account also? or do you know? i guess I will try it soon and let all of you know. Peace -Ahren

    Like

    Reply ↓
  23. Anonymous

    watch all of your gmail email go bye bye too. abunch of suck in outlook. you need to say to leave mail on the server in pop3. crappy guide. i bet abunch of people got screwed by this.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  24. Heather

    This was so incredibly useful–Thank You! Google is great, but it’s nice not to have to be running that and outlook at the same time while I’m working (I use the calendars and such all day long). So thank you for providing useful information to those who can intelligently put it to practical use…not just use it to backup gmail.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  27. Letshavefun

    First of all, this guide rocks! Clear and to the point. Thanks a million, dude. Hey Diana, I think you may be using outlook express instead of Microsoft outlook to configure the mail accountThe settings under outlook express are under tools-> accounts Then select the newly created account in the 'All' tab and click properties. The settings are under the 'advanced' tab of the dialog box.P.S. You do need to Send/Receive a couple of times to get all your mail.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  28. Anonymous

    Know good tool,which works with Outlook files-how to recover lost passoword of microsoft outlook client,also tool is free,it program can be used to recover forgotten or lost passwords,will be recovered and you get access to your mailbox, recover lost password Outlook, when lost password Outlook 2002,recover lost saved password Outlook before use for recovering lost Outlook password, when lost password in outlook 2003,will work with all versions of Microsoft Windows, starting from Windows 98, what about Microsoft Office package, it is supported from Microsoft Office 97,allows to guess your Microsoft Outlook lost password in less than several seconds, now you can make sure, that Microsoft Outlook has a very weak protection and some security measures are really necessary.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  30. Alex

    In this situation I can advise-password outlook 2003 problems broken,because program has many other capabilities it is likewise free,important fact that software can help to retrieve your password for any of these mail services: Microsoft Mail, Microsoft LDAP Directory, POP3 and IMAP mail server as well as Microsoft Exchange Server,supports all Windows versions, from Windows 98 to Windows Vista. Microsoft Office is supported starting from Microsoft Office 97,permits to find Microsoft Outlook online password and clearing password on Outlook .pst file in a second,clear password for .pst Outlook file and find pst password sorts all characters, including multilingual ones and composes another one, that will be accepted by Microsoft Outlook.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  31. Alexis

    At convert or similar actions I try to use-convert pst files.Because this tool can both recover all data too and it is free as far as I know.Moreover application compatible with Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista.

    Like

    Reply ↓

Leave a comment