Gmail size limitation

Hello,

I have a client that uses gmail and his mailbox is almost 30GB of size and he can't upgrade it to a bigger one because of gmail size limitations.
Can you please recommend me a way that he can maybe keep most of his data locally (lets say up until 2 yeara ago) in an easy to access and search format so he can free up his mailbox, Or maybe some other way he can have more email storage space ?
I bought him a year ago a software called Gmail Keeper, But due to the amount of his emails I might need to integrate a heavy duty solution (maybe to download some of the mails to outlook or such).

Thank you,

Hagi

Gmail's site has instructions for adding the POP3 account info into Outlook for example.

It'd need to be Outlook 2010 or better.

Hi Steve,

Will outlook 2010/2013 will handle well that amount of emails ? In 2003/2007 there started some problems when mailbox size went about few GB's.....

Thanks

30 GB of mail is a huge amount to keep and try to do searches on. My suggestion would be to break this down into groups and archive in to dates by quarters in Outlook. This will make it easier to handle this amount of data. You then could use Outlook 2010/2013 to do your searches.

http://dev.www.windrivers.forums.rel.../2014/04/1.gif

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HipHoper

Hello,

I have a client that uses gmail and his mailbox is almost 30GB of size and he can't upgrade it to a bigger one because of gmail size limitations.
Can you please recommend me a way that he can maybe keep most of his data locally (lets say up until 2 yeara ago) in an easy to access and search format so he can free up his mailbox,

Hagi

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I hope you're going to paid by the hour on that project!

Hmmm I saw that outlook 2010 is limited to 50GB pst/ost files and this is great news for me.
I think that what i'll do is buy the client a new office (Prob office business 2013), then configure the outlook to download gmail emails via IMAP and after it downloads all the emails, I will categorize them by years (Each yea will have it's own folder), And then it'll be quite easy to search in the archived files and he can also use the outlook to continue to download and arrange new emails. The only thing is that i need to make sure the new pst's are backed up and maybe on each new year to archive last year's emails (in the beginning of 2014 to archive year 2012) so he will actually will work on a max of 2 year segment.

Thank you for your suggestions

I'm thinking about how is best to keep offline copy of all my client Gmail account. If I use IMAP it will be downloaded to the local computer (Default IMAP behavior on outlook 2013), But I'm afraid that if I delete a file - it will also get deleted on the server, And if I'll use POP3, It might behave strangely and maybe keep deleted items in a strange gmail folder which will make the mailbox bigger than it is.......On top of that the pop3 won't be updated by actions that has been donr on other machines......
How can I keep all of his emails for future reference and yet provide him with functional outlook client ?
Maybe I should only install the 2013 as a backup tool that he will open once a month just to get his emails for offline copy ?

Please note you stated the 30GB of data is only2 years, therefore this means each year is 15GB. to do a search through this amount is going to be a huge drain on the resources and will take quite some time. This is why I suggested doing it in quarters as in example 1st_qtr_2012.pst. I have a company doing this as they are a claims adjuster for a trucking insurance company and need to do searches everyday for claim reference numbers. They don't have 5 minutes to spare waiting for the search to complete, hence the quarterly searches.

Also note the pst files with the new version are stored in a folder (Outlook Files) in Documents under the User profile. Hope this helps.

Hi Zonie,

By two years I meant to archive the emails UP UNTIL 2 years ago (lets say the beginning of 2012) so he can access the more recent files quickly.
He uses Gmail for like 5 years so it's more like 6-7GB for each recent year.
I heard that if you buy an office 2003 business license it's good for one year and then you need to pay for upgrade ? Is there some truth to it ? Might make me reconsider buying....
Maybe I'll convert his emails on my computer with 2003 trial version and then will transfer it to his outlook 2007 after I already splitted it into small chunks (like the quarters you suggested).
BTW is there a filter that can help move all the emails from specific time frame with all their sub folders or you need to create a folder and subfolders manually and transfer the data ?

Thank you

Outlook 2003 has a limit of 5-7GB for the pst file. Best advice would be to get 2010 if possible since it is less complicated to use. If not then get the 2013. As for the transferring to various folders, you can create the desired folders and then use the Rules wizard to send the emails to the corresponding folders.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zonie

Outlook 2003 has a limit of 5-7GB for the pst file. Best advice would be to get 2010 if possible since it is less complicated to use. If not then get the 2013. As for the transferring to various folders, you can create the desired folders and then use the Rules wizard to send the emails to the corresponding folders.

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Oooppss....I meant 2013.....
Thanks Zonie for the rules wizard tip.

Another point in favor of Office 2010, is that the licensing is less restrictive than 2013. Microsoft now lets you transfer the software to a new computer or a different computer, but only once in 90 days except in the case of hardware failure. Just one more layer of annoyance that I don't think most folks will appreciate.

The thing is that outlook 2013 handles google IMAP better by default (not double sent emails and such).
I'm also afraid he has xp pro so outlook 2013 might be non relevant for him.I think it'll be best for me to handle his emails on outlook 2013 and then present it back to his outlook 2007 for searching in older emails. Once a year or something I will update his outlook with latest gmail emails until he'll move to a new machine with windows 7 and office 2013

First double emails sent is generally caused by the advance settings of leaving emails on the server for certain period of time checked instead of unchecked. Second, you may run into backward compatibility with the pst file from 2013 to 2007. I have clients using the 2010 with the gmail and no problems for the last couple of years. Just a thought.

Oh C**P !!!

I made SUCH a mistake while playing with my gmail account and outlook 2013.
i backed up the outlook folder in the middle of transferring data to unique folders and needed to reformat the computer and just then noticed that i backed up OST and not PST !!! RAWR !!!
I think that part of the data was transferred to outlook.com account I've experimented with 2 days ago....Hope to restore it from there......

I GIVE UP !!!

This process of downloading emails through the IMAP protocol is not working flawlessly with large amount of emails from my experience. I tried several clients with my mere 3GB account and it took AGES (And didn't finished). It seems a job that the client won't pay for all the time that will be spent on doing it, And I can't even promise it will succeed.....
Something you got to know your limitations......Maybe I'll just offer him to arrange his web gmail folder for deletion or something like that to cover some of the effort i've put into this all thing

Sorry to hear about all the problems with the gmail account. IMHO, I have seen nothing but problems with IMAP accounts. I have used strictly POP accounts with a 99.9% problem free. You may want to go this route with the gmail.

Thanks for the sympathy Zonie.
I prefer not to get into something that I'm not sure will work in a stable way because it means troubles to me.
Maybe for backup needs pop3 is the way to go.

Update :
I suggested the client to open another gmail account and transfer emails by years to the new account, But then I saw that it's not that easy to transfer a group of manually selected emails and that you need to create a filter and that the filter doesn't show all the emails from a specific perios of time so :
1. I downloaded thunderbird portable
2. I configured the gmail IMAP (but only incoming server - So I won't delete something or ruin folder structure)
3. I split all of him emails into quarters on the gmail via browser (about 1500 emails in a quarter)
4. In settings-labels I marked only my folders to be synced via IMAP (Although the inbox is non UN-tickable).
5. started the download process

Whats annoying is that it downloads the inbox and i can not unsunscribe to it and it's quite big (6.2GB......)
Anyway I cross my fingers and hope it'll finish the syncing in the next few days and then I can present to this client all his emails untill the end of 2012 in a portable version :)

I managed to UN sync the inbox (After it's been downloaded lol).
Anyway backup is in progress and it's looking good. (Needed to manually choose what to sync in some of the folder who did not sync EVEN THOUGH I've subscribed to them....
It suppose to finifh by tommorow's night.

Thank you all for your help and encouragement :)

Glad to hear it is working out and way to hang in there. You did good as they say. :thumbs:

Thanks Zonie. Don't ask what happend.......
After backing the thunderbird portable with all the 29GB of emails to 3 backup folder (Just in case),And I thought I was safe, I noticed once I change the IMAP settings - ALL THE MAIL IS DELETED LOCALLY !!!!! W*F !!!!! I didn't delete the account, Just changed the port of the incoming mail server so the client won't mess the account while he watches the local downloaded folders. I JUST COULDN'T BELIEVE MY EYES !!! I tried the 2nd backup I had and it DELETED IT TOO !!!!
As I saw this I made another 2 fresh backups from the 3rd backup i had left,And I've installed some thunderbird addon called "batch copy" that copies the IMAP folders and their structure locally (I'm on the 4th hour of the copy, It's about 2 more hours to go).......Seems like this thing is never gonna end......lol