Use Google Groups to back up your Gmail account

Google Tutor has devised a fairly ingenious way to back up your Gmail account using Google Groups.

Basically, you’re going to create a private group and configure it to act as a remote archive. From there you simply set up filters and forwarding in your Gmail account so that copies of your messages get sent to the new group. The tutorial walks you through each step of the process, which is lengthy but quite easy. When you’re done, you’ll have a Gmail archive you can access in the event that Gmail goes down, you accidentally delete a message, etc. Granted, there’s no way to restore mail using this method, but it’s still better than having no backup at all.

Instructions:

1) Create a new Google Group. Name it with something like “yourGMailaddress+archive” or “archivefor+yourGmailaddor” something similar.

2) Give it a description that will give you a hint that this is your backup archive for your Gmail.

3) Set Access level to “Restricted” since this would only be your GMail backup and archive.

4)Skip the “Invite members” step.

5) Go to “Group settings”

6) In the “Advanced” tab, click on the “Use Google Groups to manage remote archive” option. Enter your GMail address instead of a non-Google Grooup mailing list.

choose as remote

7) Click “Save Changes”. Remember to copy-paste the e-mail address in step number # 3. You’ll need it later on when we setup your GMail to forward messages to this Google Group.

Sample e-mail: archiveforyourgmailadd-garchive-41973@googlegroups.com

You’re done with the first part, which is creating a Google Group that will serve as backup and archive for your GMail messages.

Now we continue…

Log on to your GMail account.

9) Go to “Settings.” From here you have two options:

a) Set up your GMail to forward all your incoming messages to your archive Google Group.

a.1) Paste the Google Group archive e-mail we took note of earlier into the forwarding e-mail field.

b) Create a “Filter” to specify which messages to forward to your Google Group archive.

The specific details of this filter is all up to you.

b.1) Paste the Google Group archive e-mail address we took note of earlier into the “Forward it to” field.

Apply an appropriate label if you wish, then click “Create filter”.

You’re done! You just created a Google Group that would back up your GMail messages and setup your GMail account to forward your messages to that Google Group.

In the event you cannot acces your GMail, or you accidentally deleted a message, you can still access the messages sent to you via that backup Google Group and use other means available to respond to those messages.

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