How To Download All Attachments From Gmail

How do I connect to Gmail and determine which messages have attachments? I then want to download each attachment, printing out the Subject: and From: for each message as I process it.

After all of the files have been downloaded, you can go to the folder where it has been downloaded and then access it in whatever way you like. Indian Train Simulator app. This process is one of the fastest and easiest way to download all attachments in Gmail. If you use the original way of opening every e-mail and downloading the file. GMail Attachments on Google Drive Account So next time when you receive any Gmail mail with attachment on your mail box it automatically saved on your Google drive account. One of the best and simple Google chrome addon to sync all your attachments to your GDrive. How can the answer be improved? How to download all attachments from Gmail account. Gmail attachments downloader is one of the most popular tools to download Gmail attachments from your Gmail account very effectively.

anon

13 Answers

Hard one :-)

Wowww! That was something. ;-) But try the same in Java, just for fun!

By the way, I tested that in a shell, so some errors likely remain.

Enjoy

EDIT:

Because mail-box names can change from one country to another, I recommend doing m.list() and picking an item in it before m.select('the mailbox name') to avoid this error:

imaplib.error: command SEARCH illegal in state AUTH, only allowed in states SELECTED

e-satise-satis

I'm not an expert on Perl, but what I do know is that GMail supports IMAP and POP3, 2 protocols that are completely standard and allow you to do just that.

How To Download All Attachments From Gmail

Maybe that helps you to get started.

Jeroen LandheerJeroen Landheer

untested

  1. Make sure TOS allows such scripts otherwise you account will be suspended
  2. There might be better options: GMail offline mode, Thunderbird + ExtractExtensions, GmailFS, Gmail Drive, etc.

Take a look at Mail::Webmail::Gmail:

GETTING ATTACHMENTS

There are two ways to get an attachment:

1 -> By sending a reference to a specific attachment returned by get_indv_email

2 -> Or by sending the attachment ID and message ID

( Returns a reference to a scalar that holds the data from the attachment. )

JDragoJDrago

Within gmail, you can filter on 'has:attachment', use it to identify the messages you should be getting when testing. Note this appears to give both messages with attached files (paperclip icon shown), as well as inline attached images (no paperclip shown).

There is no Gmail API, so IMAP or POP are your only real options. The JavaMail API may be of some assistance as well as this very terse article on downloading attachments from IMAP using Perl. Some previous questions here on SO may also help.

This PHP example may help too. Unfortunately from what I can see, there is no attachment information contained within the imap_header, so downloading the body is required to be able to see the X-Attachment-Id field. (someone please prove me wrong).

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Kevin HainesKevin Haines

If any of you have updated to python 3.3 I took the 2.7 script from HERE and updated it to 3.3. Also fixed some issues with the way gmail was returning the information.

Eric ThomasEric Thomas

The question is quite old and at that time Gmail API was not available. But now Google provides Gmail API to access IMAP. See Google's Gmail API here. Also see google-api-python-client on pypi.

Mitesh BudhabhattiMitesh Budhabhatti
jechavizjechaviz

Since Gmail supports the standard protocols POP and IMAP, any platform, tool, application, component, or API that provides the client side of either protocol should work.

I suggest doing a Google search for your favorite language/platform (e.g., 'python'), plus 'pop', plus 'imap', plus perhaps 'open source', plus perhaps 'download' or 'review', and see what you get for options.

There are numerous free applications and components, pick a few that seem worthy, check for reviews, then download and enjoy.

Rob WilliamsRob Williams

You should be aware of the fact that you need SSL to connect to GMail (both for POP3 and IMAP - this is of course true also for their SMTP-servers apart from port 25 but that's another story).

moster67moster67

Here's something I wrote to download my bank statements in Groovy (dynamic language for the Java Platform).

msanjaymsanjay

Have you taken a look at the GMail 3rd party add-ons at wikipedia?

In particular, PhpGmailDrive is an open source add-on that you may be able to use as-is, or perhaps study for inspiration?

toolkittoolkit
How to download attachments from gmail app on ipad

For Java, you will find G4J of use. It's a set of APIs to communicate with Google Mail via Java (the screenshot on the homepage is a demonstration email client built around this)

Brian AgnewBrian Agnew

How can I download all attachments in my Gmail Account? I'd actually like to just download files that are PDF, but downloading them all and then sorting locally is also fine.

user1970user1970

3 Answers

Long life Lifehacker! For explaining what the hell to do!

If you did want to add an attachment sent by someone else to your file system, that's where it comes in handy to know how Gmail Drive works. To add an attachment to your Gmail Drive from within Gmail, just forward the email to yourself, changing the subject to fit the Gmail Drive format. For example, if someone sent you a file called resume.doc, just forward the email to yourself with a subject of GMAILFS: /resume.doc and it should show up in the root of your Gmail Drive.

Create an Attachments label and filter for all attachments: The setup I'm describing here will allow you to access all of your Gmail attachments through gDisk or gSpace anytime, automatically.

Install gSpace or gDrive.

It's time to create an attachment label. To do so, click the New Label button and create a new label (I used Attachments). Hit OK and gDisk will create that label in your Gmail account with .gDisk appended to it—for example, Attachments.gDisk. (If you're curious, the answer is yes; you can create gDisk labels in Gmail by creating a new label and adding .gDisk to the end.)

From this point on, any email with an attachment that you label with Attachments.gDisk will show up in the gDisk interface in the Attachments folder, allowing you to easily download, upload, or sort files alphabetically, chronologically, or by filesize. You can even quickly search through the all of the attachments. For this catch-all Attachments label, however, we don't want to manually label every email with an attachment. Instead, we'll set up a Gmail filter that will automatically label all of our emails with attachments.

To do so, click the Create a Filter link in Gmail and tick the Has attachment checkbox. Go to the next step and tell your filter to apply the Attachments.gDisk label to all matching emails. If you want to label every attachment you've received up until this point, be sure to tick the 'Also apply filter to xxx conversations below' checkbox. When you're finished, click Create filter.

What the filter does

Once this filter is set up, an email with an attached document, spreadsheet, or pretty much any other file gets immediately archived under a “Files” label. There are other ways to keep files in the cloud with Gmail, using Firefox extensions like Gmail Drive or Gspace, but this filter is automatic, and can be applied retroactively to your current archive of emails containing attachments. The Firefox extensions are like FTP clients, requiring you to make a decision on what to upload and what not to. I prefer the set-and-forget approach, except for files exceeding Gmail’s 20mb attachment limit; for the latter I use Gspace.Setting up the filter

Now open up gDisk and click on your attachments label. You should have easy access to every attachment you've ever received in Gmail, including the ability to sort, search, and download one or several attachments with a simple double-click. gDisk may take a little time to list all of your attachments depending on how many you've got, but either way it's a quicker way to access all of those attachments than what you can get with Gmail.

Additionally, next time you're running low on Gmail storage space, this is an excellent way to find and eliminate those files eating up the most disk space.

Of course, you can extend this method to other, more specific attachment labels in order to create 'smart folders' using gDisk and Gmail. For example, for the Show Us Your Firefox screenshots, I created a label that automatically tags every attachment-containing email with the subject 'Show Us Your Firefox' with a special gDisk label. That way when I start browsing the hundreds of submissions, I can download all of the pictures rather than going through them one-by-one in Gmail.

The possibilities can extend as much as you need them to in order to fit your needs. For example, a File-in-Progress.gDisk label might be a good way to keep tabs on files you want to access a lot. As soon as you no longer need quick access, just remove the label from that email. Simple.


What you could try is using Google Gears, and making available all your mail AND attachments offline. This can be accessed by clicking the 'Offline' link at the top right of the gmail inbox.

This gives you your gmail functionality by syncing it while online, and making it available without depending on internet connection.

pavsaundpavsaund

The Gmail Drive shell extension (based off the Linux-only GmailFS*) actually integrates directly into Windows Explorer, turning Gmail into a physical drive that you can write to and read from.

(OR)

(OR)

Using Gmail Tool Boxeshttp://mashable.com/2007/08/10/gmail-toolbox/

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