There are lots of reasons you might want to make a copy of everything in a Gmail account. Maybe you’re done with Google and are switching to an Apple email account. Or you’re leaving a job or school where you were issued a Gmail account. You don’t want to leave behind years of messages.
Fortunately, it’s easy to back up everything in a Google email account. But it’s not quick. Plan accordingly.
How to back up a Gmail account
Don’t be concerned — this process isn’t going to be a nightmare. Google created a tool called Google Takeout to let you do just what you want.
Start by going to the home screen for your Google account: myaccount.google.com. Check in the upper-right corner of the screen to make sure you’re signed into the account you want to back up, and not some other one.
Next, before you do anything else, scroll down to the Account storage section of the page and tap on Manage storage. On the resulting page, make a note of how much storage space your Gmail account takes up. Is it less than 1GB? More than 10GB? It’ll matter soon.
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