How to Export All Your Mails to Another Gmail Account in order to back them up

A simple guide to exporting your Gmail Mails to another Gmail account via Outlook Express or Thunderbird 2.0. This can be achieve with free IMAP.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Thunderbird 2.0
• Outlook Express
• Setup IMAP access

1. First, visit Gmail Help to set up Outlook Express client to work with Gmail (IMAP access) >> http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77659&topic=12761.
   
   Follow the process to set up your main Gmail account and do it a second time to set up your secondary account. You will use it to back up your archive mails.
2. When you are set, click Send and Receive to fetch your mails from your main account to Outlook.
3. If you want to keep the same labels, go to your secondary Gmail account and create identical labels (Settings > Labels > Create a new label). Those labels should appear instantly in Outlook Express (Thanks to Google for their free IMAP service).
4. Select one of the label in your main Gmail Account (as shown on photo)
5. Hold Ctrl + A to select all your mails on right panel (or just select the mails you want to export).
6. Right-click on your mouse and select Copy to folder. Choose a folder on your secondary Gmail account to copy your messages and click OK when you are done.
7. It might take a while before the mails are exported to your secondary account.
8. Repeat steps 4 to 7 until all your archive mesages are saved on your secondary Gmail account. Be patient, it can take a long time to back up your full account to another one especially if you have thousands of mails as I do (I am still drinking coffee).
9. You can visit my website to see how to export your mails via Thunderbird 2.0: http://web-kreation.com/blog/?p=48

Tips & Warnings

• It will take time before your Gmail messages appears in your email client