How to export all messages WITHOUT internet connection?

[santaliqueur]

Hello everyone. I have a Gmail account that I access via IMAP with my iPhone, iPad, and iMac. This morning, I noticed that nearly everything was gone, only the last few weeks of emails was in the inbox. There were a few more weeks of email in the trash, but I have used this account for several years and there are a few thousand messages in there. It's not worth figuring out how this happened, but I have a question.

I have a laptop that I let a friend borrow for a project, and she logged into my account (with Wi-Fi disconnected) to see that all the emails still there on my local machine. I use Airmail and macOS Mail to access this account, and the messages are there on both.

The moment I connect this machine to the internet, it would synchronize with Gmail's servers via IMAP and delete the rest of these messages. I have changed the Gmail password so these applications can't get sign on, but I'm still nervous because I really want to back up these emails.

Using Airmail and/or macOS Mail, how can I export these inbox (and sent) messages? Ideally I want to bring everything back into Gmail for their searching tools, but I just don't want to lose them entirely. Neither of these applications are very user friendly for backup/export of messages. How can I do this safely? Thanks!

 

[JohnDS]

Choose Mailbox > Export Mailbox to export the mailbox to our hard drive.

 

[santaliqueur]

Choose Mailbox > Export Mailbox to export the mailbox to our hard drive.

I tried that on my machine here, but it didn't seem to export any data, the file size was very small on the disk. Perhaps I didn't wait long enough?

 

[MC6800]

I tried that on my machine here, but it didn't seem to export any data, the file size was very small on the disk. Perhaps I didn't wait long enough?

Most likely. What I see is that the mailbox (actually a folder) has the extension ".partial.mbox" while exporting, and ".mbox" when finished.

 

[santaliqueur]

Most likely. What I see is that the mailbox (actually a folder) has the extension ".partial.mbox" while exporting, and ".mbox" when finished.

Great, I will try this tomorrow when I have physical access to the machine.

Once I have exported the inbox and sent mailboxes to disk, can I import them back into Mail.app and use IMAP to sync back to Gmail? I'd like all the messages back on Gmail's servers like it was a few days ago, hopefully this will work. Thanks everyone!

 

[hennebe]

Great, I will try this tomorrow when I have physical access to the machine.

Once I have exported the inbox and sent mailboxes to disk, can I import them back into Mail.app and use IMAP to sync back to Gmail? I'd like all the messages back on Gmail's servers like it was a few days ago, hopefully this will work. Thanks everyone!

I know this was a long time ago, but did you ever get the IMAP sync back to Gmail working? That was my plan, and it's been nothing but hiccups.

 

[santaliqueur]

Wow this was a long time ago!

Unfortunately I was not able to solve the issue and I lost the emails. I believe my email client Airmail was the problem, but I can't be sure. I've resorted to using Apple Mail and reducing my Gmail use, and making sure I have local copies of all important email.

Even when relying on these big companies to handle our data, sometimes it's just gone and you can never figure out why. I won't make that same mistake again.