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Export Google Workspace Emails in MBOX Format Easily

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Published By Siddharth Sharma
Anuraag Singh
Approved By Anuraag Singh
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Published On January 29th, 2025
Organizations using Google Workspace may need to export emails to MBOX format for offline storage. Google offers Data Export (limited monthly), Vault (expensive), and Takeout (complex). Whereas professional tool offers more control and fewer limitations, including complete exports and filtering. Read this guide to know more.

Any organization that uses G Suite in their business may want to export Google Workspace emails in MBOX format. Having a local offline repository of emails has many advantages, and might be mandatory by law in some geographical regions.

If you are in a similar situation as an admin don’t worry. We have prepared this guide to include every native method. You will be able to understand the procedures in an easy and simple language let us start by exploring Google’s Data Export solution.

Download G Suite Emails in MBOX via Google’s Data Export

Organizations with a premium Google Workspace subscription unlock a free option for pulling out all the data. Google calls it Data Export. Once every month (30 days) admins can trigger a full data export and keep it stored inside a custom Google Cloud Storage archive for 60 days. You can download all of the data. Moreover, it is important to know that this iteration limit and once-a-month frequency restriction also apply to single-user exports.

Also, remember if you are an admin of a large organization ( user count >= 1000) or if your organization uses the FedRAMP Authorization contact Google Support Staff before using the Data Export.

Use an Admin account that is more than 30 days old and has the 2-Step Verification enabled. This requirement means that break glass emergency admin accounts won’t work.

Along with the default Gmail messages, there are two additional types of messages in the export:

  • admin quarantine messages.
  • And intra-domain Gmail confidential mode messages.

Unfortunately, even if you don’t want to include those last two data items in the export you can’t exclude them. This is because in the current iteration of the Data Export Google offers no internal filtering mechanism so it becomes an all-or-nothing transfer.

Another demerit is that the export cuts off one day before the transfer time. So you won’t see any of the messages in the output that are received in the last 24 hours before export starts.

With that being said here is the process to conduct the export.

Default Way to Get G Suite Emails in MBOX Format

The two-step process is divided into several sub-points for clarity see and follow:

Step 1: Initiate Data Export

  • Sign in as a super administrator, and access the Google Admin console.
  • Go to Menu > Data > Data import & export > Data Export.
  • Click “Set up new export.”
  • Enter a name; select “Export all user data.” Leave “Continuous export” unchecked.
  • Destination: Choose a Google-provided Cloud bucket. Select location (US, Europe, or No Preference).
  • Start: Click “Start export.”

Step 2: View & Download Exported Data (Expect at least a 48-hour to 14-day delay before the download becomes available)

  • Enable Google Cloud for your account.
  • In the confirmation email or Data Export tool, click “View archive.”
  • Check review export status which can be:
    • “Failed,”
    • “Complete with errors,”
    • “Complete”.
  • Locate and download, individual user files from the Cloud Storage UI, or use gsutil command line too for bulk extraction of folders containing zip files.
  • Unzip the Gmail folder to extract the user’s mailbox data.

Setup Google Vault and Export Google Workspace Emails in MBOX Format From There

Before You Start:

  • Super Admin: You need Google Workspace Super Admin rights.
  • Check Auto-Delete: Turn off any auto-delete settings for email and chat.
  • Enable Storage: Consider enabling comprehensive message storage and chat history.
  • Group Archiving: For Google Groups, enable archiving on groups of interest.

Steps to Setup Vault:

  1. Get Vault licenses (if needed) these are different from your regular G Suite license thus requiring additional purchases.
  2. After you buy the licenses assign them to users who need data retention and search.
  3. You can control user-level access by turning on Vault visibility for all or specific users
  4. An Optional step you may or may not use is the ability to give Vault control privileges to authorized users. So they can manage retention, holds, and investigations on your behalf.
  5. Then, go to vault.google.com and sign in.
  6. Set Default Retention:
    • Go to Retention in Vault.
    • Select Gmail service to export Google Workspace emails in MBOX format:
      • Choose Indefinitely or a Retention Period.
      • If retention period: Choose to purge only deleted data or purge all data after the period.

One advantage of using it over the regular export (and thus extra premium) is that Google Vault can generate PST files so you can export Google Workspace emails to PST directly if you want. However, seeing that there were so many demerits in the official Google Data Export mechanism it is natural to ask if there are any similar limitations in Google Vault as well. Unfortunately, the answer is yes with the most frustrating one being where the Google Vault export is permanently stuck at 95% completion

How Admins Enable Google Takeout for User-Level Export of Google Workspace Emails in MBOX Format?

Takeout is generally allowed by default. If this is not the case for your organization (e.g. a previous admin changed this setting) then you can use the following steps to Manage Takeout Access:

  1. Log in to the Google Admin console with an administrator account.
  2. Follow path Menu > Data > Data import & export > Google Takeout.
  3. Click User Access to Takeout for Google services.
  4. In the “Services without an individual admin control” section, click Edit.
  5. Choose Allow for everyone under Gmail service and Save.
  6. Optional settings include setting up Takeout for OU and Groups.

For our current situation, the user-level options will suffice.

Then the users can perform the Takeout operation from their own account by following the steps given below.

  1. Sign into your Google Account.
  2. Go to https://takeout.google.com/.
  3. De-select all.
  4. Scroll till you see Gmail you can either pick the “All data included” option or select specific data within a product.
  5. Then, Click “Next step.”
  6. Customize Archive:
    • Delivery: Choose to get a download link via email, or save to Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box.
    • Export Type: Select a one-time archive or scheduled exports.
    • File Type: Choose .zip or .tgz files.
    • Archive Size: Set a maximum archive size (1, 2, 4, 10, 50 GB); larger downloads will split into multiple files. (e.g. you choose a size 2 GB and your data is 11 GB then you will get five – 2 GB files and one 1 GB file totaling 11 GB)
  7. Your job is done Google will create your archive and email you a link. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days.

Professional Way to Export Google Workspace Emails in MBOX Format

Use SysTools Google Workspace Export tool to skip over the various limitations holding back the native solutions. It includes all the emails in the user mailbox up to the very last minute before migration. Moreover, with the delta export feature, you can also get the email data that arrived during the first migration run.

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On top of that admins can enjoy a vast array of filtering capabilities applicable at the user level, priority level, date duration, etc. So only the required data gets exported. All of this is neatly packaged in a GUI-based setup.

Here are the steps to use the tool

  • Download the tool on your machine, open and select Endpoints as G Suite and MBOX.
  • Scroll to the Workload area to mark the box next to the Emails option and apply the date filter if need be.
  • Use admin-level Source Validation for a smooth export.
  • Validate the path where you would deposit the exported emails.
  • Map the users via Fetch, Import, or Download,
  • View the user list in the preview panel, select prioritize, validate, and export.

Conclusion

In this guide on how to export Google Workspace emails in MBOX format, we explainedto  users all the various methods Google has offered for you. Discussed the potential problems with those paths. And delivered a foolproof professional solution as an alternative.