How can I backup my Gmail archive using Thunderbird?

Question

I have setup POP access to Gmail using Thunderbird. At first, it only downloaded about 350 messages all from 2007. Then I switched my Gmail POP settings (inside Gmail) to include 'all mail ever' and also set the username (inside Thunderbird) to "recent:myaccount@gmail.com" which was supposed to give access to the rest of my e-mail. It downloaded about 350 more e-mails all recent and from 2011.

However, I can't seem to figure out a way to get this thing to download ALL of my archived e-mails as well, from between 2007 and today... (or even before 2007, I am not sure why it started at 2007 initially but I know there are older e-mails than the oldest that was already downloaded).

How can I get this thing to download ALL of my e-mails (with attachments), past and present, including archived ones?

Answer 1

I would use IMAP to do such a backup. You can then copy the contents of folders into local folders. Be aware that GMail treats labels as folders, so messages with multiple labels may end up being duplicated in your local store.

Use copy to rather than move. You can select all the messages in a folder (label) to copy.

Answer 2

Keep fetching mail. GMail only makes 300-500 messages available at a time for download, but will let you download all of them eventually.