Is there a Gmail backup that will save labeling?

[barney]

I've been trying to find a good backup for Gmail. 

There are several ways to preserve the existing messages. 

But I've yet to find one that will maintain the labeling that's been applied to those messages.

Since the labeling has gotten fairly complex over the years - started in 2005 - a lot of information will be lost if I cannot maintain the labeling along with the messages. 

Anyone found such a tool?

[justice]

gmail offline mode?

[wraith808]

Gmail Keeper.  It's by Innovation Gear, but I don't see a mention of it on their site strangely enough.   You can find information on Bits Du Jour though.

I bought it, but haven't tried it yet.  So much software, so little time.  But the comments on Bits seemed positive.  I'll try to give it a whirl and let you know how it comes out.

[barney]

justice,

Tried offline when first released, but had some probs with it - don't recall now what they were, whether 'twas Gear probs or Google probs. 

I'm retrying it now ... take a while to d/l 2+ GB of mail, though, so be a bit before I'll know if it's working.  If it does, I'll come back and mention it here, thanks.
~~~~~~~~~~
wraith808,

Ran across Gmail Keeper announcement in the Gmail Backup forae.  Looks interesting, and prolly does exactly what I want, but I'm looking for something more OS-independent - read cross-platform - if I can find it.  Could prolly run Keeper w/VBox, maybe with Wine, but rather have something a bit more attuned to Linux when I'm not in Windows.  However, it is a possible fallback, thanks.

[yoyuo]

wow, I'll have a try. thanks.

[barney]

Just a quick update.

Google's offline mail, via Google Gears, works well enough for advertised purposes, I guess, but I don't really trust it as a backup mechanism ... several emails on line don't seem to have made it to local storage.

Gmail Backup was working pretty well at first, but the latest version - 0.107 as of this writing - changed several elements of the backup process.  Those changes made it pretty well useless to me.  Four+ years of email does not store well in a single directory.

Postbox, a commercial product currently in free beta, doesn't properly handle mail with multiple labels/tags.  Since I'm using Google's label system to categorize and segregate mail into multiple areas, this product, as well, fails to satisfy.  Perhaps it'll improve as the beta moves forward, but currently it is nonfunctional for my purposes.

MailStore Home simply wants too much attention.  It insists on running in the foreground, and seems slow, as well.  If I switch to any other desktop - or even just a browser to check current mail! - it goes belly up.  I don't know whether it will do what I want or not, but I just don't have time to deal with such a prima donna of an app, one that doesn't seem to understand the multitasking concept.

That leaves only Gmail Keeper, a commercial product, yet to try ... there doesn't seem to be anything else around <sigh />. 

I'll be back with an update on that as soon as I've got something worth mention.

[wraith808]

I bought GMail Keeper from BDJ.  Glad I got it so cheap.  I'm still working through it, but so far, it seems to do half of what it is supposed to.  I was able to download messages from one gmail account and it kept labels.  So far, so good.  But when I tried to upload it to the other account, though it created the labels it was supposed to restore to, it didn't restore the e-mails.  I've tried a couple of times, but no dice.

I'm still trying as I have time- I haven't contacted the developer yet, so there's still hope.