GMail Backup 0.105

This is the next pre-final release of the GMail Backup tool - the ultimate one-click solution for doing backups of your GMail account.

Here is the changelog of this version:

  • The user interface was improved. Now it has the minimize button, so you can hide your backup process. If you want to see how many percent is done, you can simple look at the window title in the task list!
  • We tried to fix an "Invalid credentials" error during backup. Now, the Gmail Backup tries to reconnect if it occurs. Can somebody test this feature?
  • Internal structure of program was changed in many ways. The program now supports the ZIP archives to store messages. You can simply enter the path ending with .zip into the directory path and the program will add all messages into this archive.
  • The Gmail Backup now uses templates to generate the filename inside the backup directory. You can simply specify the template using the hashmark after the directory name. The variables in the template are substituted with values extracted from the stored emails.
    For example you can enter the directory like this:


    c:\Backup\honza.svec@gmail.com#$YEAR\$FROM\$YEAR$MONTH$DAY-$SUBJ

    You can also use templates with ZIP files. Currently, the following variables are supported:

    • $YEAR, $MONTH, $DAY
    • $HOUR, $MINUTE, $SECOND
    • $FROM, $SUBJ

    You can write the variable as $YEAR if you can use ${YEAR} if some alphanumeric characters follows immediately after the variable name.

  • Gmail Backup can be now easily localized into other languages. If you are familiar with software localization, look at the gmail-backup.pot file included in the installation directory. The installation comes with one localization into Czech.
  • Gmail Backup should be portable application. If you copy the content of installation directory to your flash-disc and create and empty file called gmail-backup-gui.cfg in this directory, the Gmail Backup will use files only in this directory (there are no hardcoded paths in the program).

This version contains major changes into the core of the program. It is considered less stable then the previous 0.104 version but it comes with many improvements. If you want so, please help us with testing it.

IMAP & Gmail Labs note: If you are using the Gmail Labs, please make sure that you have enabled the IMAP access into the All Mails folder. You can check this in the Settings/Labels page of your Gmail account. Otherwise, Gmail Backup will tell you, that you are using "Unsupported language of Gmail"!

Download gmail-backup-0.105.exe

Download gmail-backup-0.105-linux.zip

Bug reporting: Please use our forum for reporting bugs and wishes. Thanks!

Linux note: Under Linux you will need the wxPython (http://wxpython.org) packages installed. It also requires the ctypes module, it should be included in the Python 2.5 distribution. For earlier versions of Python you can find the package in the repositories of your distribution.

Thank your for testing and bug reporting

Your GMail Backup Team

GMail Backup 0.104

This is the seventth pre-final release of the GMail Backup tool - the ultimate one-click solution for doing backups of your GMail account.

Here is the changelog of this version:

  • We added support for German GMail - this GMail is not called GMail, it is called Google Mail. Users of German Google Mail can now do backups of their accounts using GMail Backup.
  • We tried to fix the UnicodeError reported here. Is there somebody using the non-ASCII labels who can test it and report the results?

This version is only a small bugfix release, so if you don't observe any problems you don't have to upgrade.

GMail Backup 0.103

This is the sixth pre-final release of the GMail Backup tool - the ultimate one-click solution for doing backups of your GMail account.

Here is the changelog of this version:

  • Due to my mistake, the 0.102 version still contained the 40 days period, so we fixed it and the new version is really 40-days-period free! [1]
  • Starting with this version you can specify the date range to restore. Simply specify the dates in "Since date" and "Before date" GUI fields and run "Restore". If you want to do a full restore, simply check the "Newest emails only" checkbox and click the "Restore". If you are using the command-line version, simply use

    gmail-backup.exe restore dir user@gmail.com password 20070621 20080101

    where the dates specifies the since_date and before_date options.

    Can somebody here do a thorough test of this feature?

  • The reported OverflowError should be fixed. [2].
  • We added the "local" exception checks. If the error occur in the code that parses the email, it only prints the traceback and continues with processing of the rest.
  • We use UTF-8 encoded labels in labels.txt. If you have labels with non-ASCII characters, you should do a full backup!

It is very recommended to upgrade.

Is it necessary to enable IMAP in gmail before using GmailBackup?

Yes, the IMAP access is necessary to run GMail Backup. If you don't have the IMAP access, you will get the following message:

Error: IMAP: [ALERT] Your account is not enabled for IMAP use. Please visit your Gmail settings page and enable your account for IMAP access. (Failure)

You can see more at http://www.gmail-backup.com/incremental-backup#comment-164

GMail Backup 0.102

This is the fifth pre-final release of the GMail Backup tool - the ultimate one-click solution for doing backups of your GMail account.

Here is the changelog of this version:

  • This version fixes errors reported in _unicodeHeader() [1, 2, 3].
  • The program also doesn't insist on creating the current.eml file [4].
  • We also removed the 40 day period, described here: [5].
  • The application also doesn't connect "home" every time it runs the backup or restore to check new versions. The GUI version contains the button "New Versions" for checking for new versions of GMail Backup and the command line tool has the "version" command [6].
  • In this version, we also improved support for Windows Vista [7, 8].

It is recommended to upgrade.

What happens if I delete (volountarily) some emails from my GMail account? Which GMail "folders" get backed up?

Question details:
Hello there.

- what happens if I delete (volountarily) some emails from my GMail account? I mean, will I still be retain a copy in my backup folder on my computer or will it rather be deleted to?
- which GMail "folders" get backed up? Just the inbox or also the sent items and the drafts?

Thanks so far,
Flavio.

Are labels, dates and "from" fields preserved?

Question details:
First off, good work. Looks nice.

My main question is this:

Are labels, dates and "from" fields preserved? I am backing up from
one gmail account and moving to another with your software.

Thanks!

Jason

All these fields are preserved. Labels are stored in the backup directory in the labels.txt file, so you can manually edit them. Dates and From fields are part of the message stored in the .eml file.

I want to migrate to a Google Apps Gmail account from standard myalias@gmail.com account. How?

Question details:
Hi.

I just discovered your Gmail backup/migration utility and it looks useful.

However, I want to use it for a Google Apps Gmail account, bu there is no documentation on how to do this.

Could you please add a few lines to your "Documentation" page to explain how to do this? Some postings in your forum mentioned that people are doing this, but I don't see how.

Outage of Google e-mail service

If you noticed yesterday outage of the Google e-mail service, it was an error on your side. Google had a bug in the system of contacts and it caused malfunction of the web interface of Gmail. Failure of the service lasted approximately two hours and affected mainly web interface. Users, who accessed their mailbox in alternative ways, probably did not notice any problems.

This time you do not have to worry about the e-mails, the archive has not been affected by this bug. Bug was removed and Gmail is fully functioning now. Although there is no data loss, we should be careful.

GMail Backup 0.101

This is the fourth pre-final release of the GMail Backup tool - the ultimate one-click solution for doing backups of your GMail account. It seems that the strange error with UnicodeError was fixed. If you are interested, read the whole story - here, here and here. Two people helped us to discover and fix the problem so we thank them, thank you smap and Eric. It is recommended to upgrade.

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