Exporting All Your Gmail messages to Another Gmail Account

I love Gmail and its great features that makes it be the best email service ever but I don’t like to know that all my messages are hosted on Google servers and that, one day, someone might stole my account because of a security flop.

It is possible to back up your Gmail account by fetching your mails via an email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird to keep a local copy of your messages. Or you can use some apps to fetch/back up on a CD/ import your Gmail mails to your local drive (though none worked for me). Some even suggest to use Google Groups to back up your mails (what a weird idea!).

But what about copying all your archive mails from one Gmail account in to another? Would it be possible?

It took me months before I could figure out a way to do this. My idea was to set up an email client to work with Gmail and then to copy the archive mails from my main account to my secondary account. After many experiments and the free IMAP, I finally got it working in both Outlook Express and thunderbird.

Here is how in Outlook Express:

1. First, visit Gmail Help to set up your Outlook Express client to work with Gmail (IMAP access). Follow the process to set up your main account and do so a second time to set up your secondary account. You will use the latter 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 below):
   
5. Hold Ctrl + A to select all your mails in the right panel (or just select the mails you want to export):
   
6. Right-click and select Copy to folder. Choose a folder in your secondary Gmail account to copy your mails and click OK (“Aceptar” in my Spanish version) when you are done:
   
7. It might take a while before all the mails are exported to your secondary account.
   
8. Repeat steps 4 to 7 until all your archive mails are saved on your secondary Gmail account. Be patient, depending on how emails you have it can take a while to back up your full account to another one (I am still drinking coffee).

In Thunderbird 2:

1. Visit Gmail Help to set up your Thunderbird client to work with Gmail (IMAP access). As described before for Outlook Express, create two accounts;  one for the main account and and another one for the secondary account (File > New > Mail Account).
2. Click Get Mail (top left) to fetch your mails from your main account to Thunderbird.
3. If you haven’t done so yet (step 3 -Outlook Express), set up identical labels for your secondary account.
4. In thunderbird, select one of the label in your main Gmail Account.
5. Hold Ctrl + A to select all your mails in your right panel (or just select the mails you want to export).
6. Right-click and select Copy to. Choose a folder on your secondary Gmail account to copy your mails:
   
7. Wait until the transfert is complete.
8. Repeat steps 4 to 7 until all your archive mails are saved on your secondary account.

I didn’t try with other email clients but I guess it works pretty much in the same way.

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