How to back up your Google stuff BEFORE they lock your account.

[reddragdiva]

You get up tomorrow and log into GMail. You can't get in. Your account is locked. Your mail, calendar, documents — all gone. What do you do now?

Remember that Google has no customer service, even for paying customers. If your account is locked for any reason, spurious or not, you're utterly fucked.

I keep a regular backup of my GMail. The way to do this that actually works (unlike Thunderbird, IME) is with OfflineIMAP (cheers to ideological_cuddle for the tipoff). It's command-line and geeky, but by crikey it works.

Using it on Ubuntu or Debian is absurdly simple:

• sudo apt-get install offlineimap
• Set up a ~/.offlineimaprc file cut'n'pasted from this one, with your own username and password.
• offlineimap

This will create a folder with all your mail in it, in maildir format (plain text, one message per file). You will have duplicate messages in different folders. I'm just doing this to get an archive, so zipped the result.

GMail's IMAP interface is subtly broken, to the point where it can crash offlineimap. Just start it running again, repeat as often as necessary. (If you like, get a more current version.)

GMail is still the best email interface I've ever used, and I wish Thunderbird would just get the hint and clone it to the last detail. But this way I also have all my stuff myself, just because I can.

I haven't tried this on a Mac or Windows. Could someone do this and write up instructions?

For other Google services, you can get your data from Google Takeout. While your account's not locked.