Permanetly saving Gmail to macOS Mail

New solution I'm doing now:

1) Add iCloud account in Mail

2) Add G Suite account in Mail

3) Drag-and-drop folders & messages from G Suite folders into iCloud folders

4) complete the MX record domain change to get my custom email going to iCloud+

...this seems easier than any further messing around w/ Takeout or MBOX tools.

leroydouglas wrote:

mdelvecchio wrote:

I am currently using the free edition of Google' G Suite for custom-domain email. However, Google is discontinuing this product and I do not wish to subscribe to their paid replacement plan.

As such, I want to download all of my G Suite emails from Google's cloud, into a local mailbox on my macOS' Mail application, so that I don't lose the messages when the account is closed.

How do I do this?

I can currently connect to my G Suite email via the macOS Mail app, just like one would for a normal Gmail account. I assume this uses IMAP and the messages are NOT all stored on my own Mac, but are in the cloud only. I want to save them all locally, so that I have them forever.

Thanks!

Moving your mail to "On My Mac" is just that—Mailboxes you create locally.

So yes they are preserved locally on your Mac when you delete an account

Create or delete mailboxes in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

Mail User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

When I simply add my G Suite (Gmail) account to Mail on macOS, it uses IMAP. IMAP doesn't download all the messages and attachments. I can test this by disabling my internet and attempting to open the attachments on messages from the G Suite account -- they are not available.

The only account that was nested under the "On My Mac" section header Mail sidebar, was the MBOX import of the G Suite export (from Takeout). Those were indeed all downloaded locally, including attachments -- but unsorted as the labels are lost during MBOX-to-Mail transition. Thus this was a failed experiment, so I've deleted that.

Now I am just drag-and-dropping the G Suite folders & messages into the iCloud account folders. This works -- after giving them time to copy over the messages are all available *with attachments* even when offline. Thus I can safely let the G Suite account be shutdown by Google now.

I see now that I can use Mailbox > New Mailbox> (select On My Mac) to create a new folder mailbox that's local to my Mac, and I could copy the same folders/messages to it, instead of iCloud. But I'd rather have them on my iCloud mailbox than my Mac alone.

No, exporting thousands of emails into PDFs isn't what I mean. I mean downloading all the messages off the IMAP account and keeping them locally in my local Mail app archive file -- like we did with POP messages back in the day.

I'm fairly certain this can be done in the macOS Mail app itself?

Google Takeout may provide a solution or work-around -- you can export the Gmail messages into MBOX format, and then import those into macOS Mail:

https://www.outlooktransfer.com/how-to-open-mbox-file/

Another idea:

1) complete the MX record domain change to get my custom email going to iCloud+

2) open macOS Mail for my iCloud account

3) add my G Suite account to Mail (as it already is)

4) Drag-and-drop the G Suite account mail/folders to the iCloud account folders

...may work?

Unfortunately the Google Takeout tool's MBOX export is simply one giant folder of messages -- no label/folder designations are preserved. This is...less than useful.