Backup Your Gmail with Portable Thunderbird & Gmail IMAP Extension

As much as we all love Google, it's downright scary entrusting your emails/life to them. They have the control, not you. So, today I've decided to reign in my 7 gigs of email history, organize it and store it away. It's time to take back control and here's how I'm going to do it.

I'll only need three things:

Portable Thunderbird
(http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable)

Gmail IMAP Account Setup extension for Thunderbird
(https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/6381)

Zindus extension for backing up contacts
(https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/6095)

I've created a 20 gig TrueCrypt volume to hold all my emails. Even though I have 7 gigs of data on GMail, I'm using two methods to backup my emails.

• Method#1 is using POP.
• Method#2 is IMAP.

The reason I am using both methods is the off-chance that I somehow accidentally reconnect a backup copy of my IMAP account with the new wiped out Gmail I'm moving to. Also because of the fact that after downloading 10,000+ emails via POP it is only downloading 1 message at a time and it still has about 5,000 emails to go...

Method#1 is pretty standard, setup Gmail in Thunderbird like a regular POP account. The down-side to this method is that it only downloads received emails, not sent messages and you don't have labels as folders.

Method#2 is only 4 steps:
First, install the Gmail IMAP Account Setup extension.

Then add your IMAP account under Tools > Account Settings... > Add Account... > Gmail IMAP



After it's setup, Thunderbird will need to restart.

Next, go to Tools > Account Settings... > Offline & Disk Space (make sure you're under your IMAP account)

• check the box for "Make the messages in my Inbox available..."
• click the button for "Select folders for offline use..." and check all your folders
  

Last, [*Update*: After a while I noticed the status bar does not show anything and you have no clue if it's still downloading messages, rather than using File > Offline > Download/Sync Now..., you can choose to Work Offline and it will ask you if you want to download your messages before going offline. Then you know it's still working in the background until it goes offline. Or continue below to use the old way.]

the old way:

go to File > Offline > Download/Sync Now...

• check the box for "Mail Messages" and hit OK

That's it! Just sit back and watch Thunderbird do all the work.



While it's doing that, install and configure Zindus to backup your contacts.

Note:

• You CANnot sync your chats using this method. [*UPDATE*: I thought of a way to save chats. Apply a label to all your chats such as a "gchats" label and check that as one of your folders under Tools > Account Settings... > Offline & Disk Space...]
  
• If you're storing this backup away and wiping your emails online, you should go into Offline mode and reset your gmail password to avoid any accidental syncing.