Lazy web - backing up Gmail

[lovingboth]

OK, there's a Gmail account whose email I wish to have copy of in another Gmail account. Doing that with new messages is trivial, but there are about a thousand messages in there I want to backup too.

What doesn't work:

Settings/Accounts and Import/Import mail and contacts - you can't import from another Gmail account!

Settings/Accounts and Import/Check mail using POP3 - although you can set up reading another Gmail account via POP3, the Gmail server will not let you leave the read mail on the server. So you can use this to move mail to another account, but not copy it.

Settings/Filters then setting up a filter that catches everything, telling Gmail to forward it to the other account, and saying 'apply this filter now to all those existing messages' - it simply doesn't forward them although it will do other things to them all, like apply a label.

At the moment, I am pondering setting up a third account, then on the backup account, set up forwarding of all incoming mail to the third account, then use POP3 to get all the messages from the original account.

This will empty the original account (boo) but should result in there being two copies of everything: one on the backup, one on the third. Then on the original account use POP3 to read the third account.

Madness, but it might work...

Any other suggestions? Gmail's help doesn't seem to think that anyone might want to backup a Gmail account.

Comments

[sfred]

I think this would work:
Set up the account you want to backup *from* (Account1) as a pop3 account on Thunderbird (and tell it not to delete from the server). Download all email.
Set up the account you want to backup *to* (Account2) as an imap account on Thunderbird.
Select all emails in Account1 and drag'n'drop them into a folder in Account2.
I've used this to back up a Yahoo account to Gmail. It should probably work with other clients but I've only done it with Thunderbird.

[lovingboth]

Alas, Gmail's POP3 server will not respect requests to leave stuff on the server, whatever client you use.

I fear it is the IMAP route.

[sfred]

Er, I've backed up my Gmail to my desktop using POP3, and it's all still there on Gmail for me to actually use; I wonder why it's respecting my right to leave stuff on the server, and not yours? (I don't have enough fu to actually think of reasons.)

[rhialto]

I've got a similar problem - though with Yahoo. I want to backup all mails from the 'sent' box; but Yahoo only does POP (not IMAP) and that connects only to the normal inbox, not to any other folders... I have read methods with moving stuff around between folders (both on client and server at the same time) but it concerns a lot of messages and sounded rather fragile to me. There ought to be a better way.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Set up IMAP on the account, download all mail to a desktop mail client, then resync the mail to the alternate GMAIL account via IMAP?

It's the I used to move mail between servers back in the old Pegasus Mail days...

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

Use IMAP and drag and drop between accounts!

I use IMAP and then allow my desktop machine to back it up.