How To Read Your Google Takeout Emails

 

How To Read Your .MBOX Emails From Google Takeout

December 10, 2023

Running out of free space in your Google account? Is most of your space taken up by emails and email attachments? This will help you to free up space. You can download all your old emails, delete them from Google, and still be able to read them. The instructions that follow in my blog post assume you have already downloaded all your emails via Google Takeout.

Doing a search on how to read the emails I downloaded was mostly unfruitful. There were some older items I found doing a Google search, but they did not work for me. Additionally, I kept getting results from sketchy looking websites that wanted me to download their .MBOX reading software. If you’re like me, that’s not a solution you’re going to use. 

Start by downloading Mozzilla Thunderbird https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/. Mozilla Thunderbird is a free program that you can use to view the .MBOX file downloaded via Google Takeout. 

Note: In order to import your Gmail archive (Google Takeout download in .MBOX format) into Local Folders within Thunderbird for searching and viewing purposes, you need to temporarily configure at least one account in Thunderbird.

The first time Thunderbird runs, you will be taken to the Account Setup tab.

  

Install & Set Up Thunderbird

1.    Go to https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US and click the Free Download button.

2.    Open the downloaded file and install Thunderbird.

3.    Uncheck the “Use Thunderbird as my default mail application” box on the Summary section.

4.    Configure it with your personal email account.

Install Thunderbird Import Tool

You will need to install a third-party import add-on within Thunderbird, to import the MBOX file.

1.    Click the hamburger/grid icon in the top right corner and select Account Settings from the drop-down menu.

2.    Click Add-ons and Themes from the bottom of the left sidebar.

3.    Enter Import in the search field at the top and press ENTER.

4.    Click the green Add to Thunderbird button next to ImportExportTools NG.

5.    Click Add and OK! in the dialog boxes that appear.

6.    Navigate back to the main Email tab (tab with your email address at the top).

7.    Right-click Local Folders in the left sidebar and select New Folder.

8.    Enter a name for your new folder such as My Old GMail Imported Email in the Name field and click Create Folder.

 

 

Import Your .MBOX File(s)

You will now import the .MBOX from your Google Takeout download. It will be imported into a local Thunderbird folder, which is stored on your computer’s hard drive.

Note: Make sure to extract the contents of your Google Takeout .ZIP archive before proceeding. 

1.    Right-click the Imported Email folder you just created, then hover over ImportExportTools NG in the drop-down menu, and select Import mbox file

2.    Select Import directly one or more mbox files from the dialog box that appears and click OK

3.    Navigate to the folder where your Google Takeout. MBOX file(s) is stored, select one or more of the files, and click Open. The contents of your .MBOX files will be imported into Thunderbird.

It may take several minutes to import your .MBOX file(s). Import times depend on how much hard drive space your computer has, how large the file is, and how many files you’re importing at once. If you have more than one large .MBOX file to import, we recommend importing them one at a time.

 

After your file(s) has been imported, you can click the Imported Email folder to view all of the emails included in the file. The .MBOX file imports should include the name of the Google label followed by “.mbox” (e.g., Inbox.mbox, Drafts.mbox, etc.).

Credit for almost the whole Blog to Swarthmore College. After the intro, I put in a few minor edits to the instructions. Their entire article can be found here: https://support.swarthmore.edu/support/solutions/articles/14000044855.