Is It Possible To Save A Gmail Backup To A File ? for offline browsing purposes

[yordan 10]

I love gmail. I use gmail in webmail form, logging to the gmail.com site.Sometimes, when I receive some documents, I would like to save the documents to a folder on my computer, along with a copy of the concerned mail. How could that be made?Some mailservers do this, for instance with outlook when accessed via webmail.But how can we do this with gmail? Is this possible? Apart creating a text file and copy-paste the mail text, which is the obvious workaround.

[Personoid 0]

Actually, you could probably do this with a Firefox add-on.
It might be possible with a greasemonkey script.
I'm not really sure about greasemonkey, but I'm almost 100% certain that you could create an add-on for it.

Actually, an add-on may exist for Firefox.


https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
'>Firefox Add-ons page

[yordan 10]

Thanks for the idea, I'll have a look at the firefox extensions page.

[grim reaper1666 0]

try thunderbird that like outlook, but you can use gmail accounts with it. this might allow you to save your mail.

[8ennett 0]

I've never really used an email client, however my parents use one called incredimail (free), the way it works it connects to your email account and basically downloads all the emails, attachments and all, to the computer. That way they're all stored on your computer, however in the settings you can set it to delete all mail from the inbox once it has downloaded them (default) or just to leave it as it is but download all new mail periodically. It's a good idea, however I can see problems trying to access your mail on another computer if the client keeps deleting your inbox and storing the mail on the other computer.

[BCD 1]

8ennett, we an also have the client not to delete from server and at the same time only download the latest emails. Using POP method to download emails, in gmail setting's checmark "Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on". Now the email client will only download the latest incoming emails. But the problem is to access the saved email and document, we would need to open the email client itself. Incredimail is just like thunderbird email client but with some colorful features attached to it.

Yordan, I looked in the gmail labs for such kind of addon. But there isnt any. May  be you can submit your idea to the gmail labs. To submit, go to gmail labs by clicking green jar thing near settings on top right (assuming you already have gmail labs enable, if not can be enabled from settings>Labs), scroll to the bottom of the page -->  "Suggest a Labs feature".

Edit: Ah, well you can just visit this page to submit your idea: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ https://e''>https://e'>http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ https://e

Edited June 7, 2010 by Spencer (see edit history)

[8ennett 0]

8ennett, we an also have the client not to delete from server and at the same time only download the latest emails.

in the settings you can set it to delete all mail from the inbox once it has downloaded them (default) or just to leave it as it is but download all new mail periodically

probably wasn't clear but that's what i said. a nifty little solution i use for POP3 mail is currently built in to the game i'm designing. instead of having to go to the mail server (mail.drug-mann.com) and log in using the google interface, admins can now access their emails from within the game using the Swift Mailer php library. Obviously it doesn't offer the advanced features of gmail, well it could, but that's only because I didn't feel the need to program all that in. An admin really only needs to be able to read, reply, delete etc.

Swift Mailer is a great php solution for including POP3 mail accounts in your site. And if you are running an SMTP server then even better, you can have your own complete email system up and running.

[BCD 1]

Oh yes, I skipped the second part of your sentence.

[yordan 10]

Thanks for your replies, folks.I used a stupid workaround. I simply printed the mail using the CutePdf printer. This created a pdf file which can be stored along with the files and documents which are part of a given project, and can be read offline on any system, including these who do not have Thunderbird or Outlook installed.

[The Simpleton1405241582 0]

I used a stupid workaround. I simply printed the mail using the CutePdf printer. This created a pdf file which can be stored along with the files and documents which are part of a given project, and can be read offline on any system, including these who do not have Thunderbird or Outlook installed.

That's a neat idea for a few mails but for people who want to backup their entire inbox, it would be too much of a job to print so many mails. In such cases Thunderbird seems best and convenient, although it does take some time for people with hundreds (or even thousands) of mails to backup their entire inbox.

[yordan 10]

That's a neat idea for a few mails but for people who want to backup their entire inbox, it would be too much of a job to print so many mails. In such cases Thunderbird seems best and convenient, although it does take some time for people with hundreds (or even thousands) of mails to backup their entire inbox.

I agree. For a complete backup of my mailbox I would rather use Thunderbird.Here, I just wanted to save an attachment along with the mail containing the attached file, in a single "from_my_cousin" folder, in order to have the program (which is a file) and the instructions (in the mail) in the same folder.

[The Simpleton1405241582 0]

I agree. For a complete backup of my mailbox I would rather use Thunderbird.Here, I just wanted to save an attachment along with the mail containing the attached file, in a single "from_my_cousin" folder, in order to have the program (which is a file) and the instructions (in the mail) in the same folder.

Your idea works great for important mails. I'll try it the next time I get some important or official mail that I need to save. Thunderbird can get slow sometimes and in Linux it takes a while to get the backup files without opening the program.

[BCD 1]

Nice idea Yordan. I too convert some web pages to pdf for later viewing. I use a web2pdf extension in plug-in, which converts any web page to a down-loadable pdf. In fact there is no need of plug-in, the website http://www.web2pdfconvert.com/ can be used instead. Useful when on a different PC with no off-line converter.

For exact replicas of web content which keeps formatting intact, web2pdf is good, but unfortunately the text is non selectable which is a big strike against this.

[The Simpleton1405241582 0]

For exact replicas of web content which keeps formatting intact, web2pdf is good, but unfortunately the text is non selectable which is a big strike against this.

If I'm not wrong, PDFs are constructed in the form of images? All the text is selected as one image and then saved? I'm not sure of this although I think that's about right. Anyway, there's a quick solution if you just want to select some text and convert it into PDFs quickly. Use the Open Office Word Processor. Paste text into it just like you would in Microsoft Word, and then in the File menu choose Export as PDF. That's it. One quick step to convert your text into PDF. No need to run behind "doc to pdf converters" anymore Oh and I'm not sure if this will work well in Windows but you can select text from existing PDFs and copy them into Open Office and save them again as PDFs. If you paste selected text from PDFs into other word processors, all you would see is garbage.

[BCD 1]

If I'm not wrong, PDFs are constructed in the form of images?

Yes, exactly. It takes screen shot of the web page at the same time saving the positions of links appearing in the page, then it converts those saved locations of the image to hotspots and link them back again.

Yes open office does a great job, but then its a bit more work of manually copying and pasting it. Yordan's idea of pdf printer is more easier, as it is just the matter of pressing Ctrl + P and saving the pdf.