Now, download all your Gmail and Google Calendar data

This is big news for Google users. The Internet giant has announced that you will now be able to download your data from Gmail and Google Calendar now. The

Nishtha Kanal|Dec 06, 2013, 13:33:45 IST

This is big news for Google users. The Internet giant has announced that you will now be able to download your data from Gmail and Google Calendar. The long overdue feature will grant you access to your data, making it easy for you to back it up, use offline or shift to another service.

In a post on the Gmail blog, Nick Piepmeier, Software Engineer for Google wrote, “Having access to your data and being able to take it with you is important, especially if that data contains precious memories like old love letters, your first job offer, or that 100-message thread discussing the merits of various cat videos.” For having better access to your data, he wrote, Google is now rolling out the ability to export a copy of Gmail and Google Calendar data.

Download and backup your data

You can choose between downloading all your mail and calendar data at one go or you can choose a subset of labels and calendars. You can also opt in to download one single archive file for multiple products that include a copy of your Gmail, Calendar, Google+, YouTube, Drive and other Google data.

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In order to export your data, you will need to head to Google Accounts and under the “Account” subheading, click on “Download your data”. Google says that while the ability to download your Google Calendar data is already available, support for Gmail export should be coming up over the next few weeks. Of course, most of us know that Google usually activates this take-out feature when it is killing a service (RIP Google Reader), though even it cannot possibly be thinking of closing Gmail and Calendar (shudder!). The company says it wants to make migration easier for users and for the sake of our health, we are taking its word for it.

By Nishtha Kanal

Intrigued by all things social, Nishtha will invariably tweet about you. When not tweeting or writing about the next viral video, you will hear her proclaiming her love to Metallica, James Hetfield, Opeth, Akerfeldt and all bands that go 'growl'. She also obsesses about ACP Pradyuman and South Park and you will always find her moving around with a book. Her focus is on all the happening stuff in the tech domain, and she won't hesitate to take a shot at some of the oddball devices that make their way to our labs.