Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2019/04/12/cloudpull-discontinued-look-elsewhere-for-google-backups/
Due to security-related changes in Google’s permissions, Golden Hill Software has discontinued the CloudPull utility for making local backups of data in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, and Google Drive.
Hmmm. Takeout defaults to downloading everything, so automating it is a question of scripting two button presses (so long as you don’t mind a huge download). That might be doable with an AppleScript.
Given a source full download and a target Google Drive folder, an app that lets you set everything you want to keep locally and then builds that archive seems doable. It would be cake to write an app that just takes the full download and intelligently culls it based on your preferences.
The download sizes are problematic—I got something like 13 files, each 2 GB in size, to download. Obviously, I can select just Google Docs in the list to reduce the file size, but it’s still basically a batch operation where you initiate the backup and then have to download it some time later. Not ideal.
Not sure how apropos this is, but I am a small-town public official, recently served with a public records request asking for copies of certain town-related emails. I use a dedicated gmail address for all my town-related email, and figured it would be simple enough to copy and print as PDF all of the relevant emails (a subset of the whole) to a GoogleDrive folder (and send a link to the town attorney). That proved ungainly, as each email “printed” to Drive included every autosaved version of the email, such that a half-page message would appear as, say, 20 pages of incremental iterations. In the end, I accessed the gmails through my Apple Mail app and printed them one-by-one to PDF, which worked.
In future, I’d like an an app, plugin, or other tool by which I could automatically archive a PDF copy of any email I send to anyone else in the town government/operations. I envision a macro function where, for any recipient I’ve put on a hotlist, the app will automatically print the email to PDF and store it in an archive folder – preferably one on my own hard drive, not in the cloud, though if that’s the best choice for other reasons, so be it. Any recommendations on how I could achieve this or similar behavior using gmail, either through a browser, Apple Mail or other specialized client software?
Thanks,
Hoagie
In Apple Mail, you can copy all the requested emails to a temporary mailbox (drag 'n drop with the Option key held down), select all the messages, and click File > Export to PDF. In the target folder you’ll end up with PDFs named after the message subject lines. Multiple messages in a collapsed conversation view will be combined in a single PDF, if you need every message to be its own PDF, turn off View > Organize by Conversation in the mailbox.
You could also use Export Mailbox in Apple Mail to provide the messages in standard *.mbox format (much better format for emails than PDF, IMO). However, mbox contains the full headers of the emails so if there are messages from citizens, they might contain their home ip address and it might be prudent for their privacy to redact those. In BBEdit, I would use Find and Replace (with Grep enabled) to Find ^Received: from.*$ and Replace with Received: [REDACTED]. An AppleScript or other script could be written to do basically the same thing. I don’t know if there are other lines in headers that could contain information that should remain private.
Thanks Curtis, that’s mostly quite helpful. My Apple Mail does not have an option to “export to PDF”, which I assume is because it’s version 6.6 (associated with OS 10.8.5, which I run on my 2010 MacBook Pro for several reasons, including that I don’t know what software I’d use for photo library management in place of the now-defunkt iView MediaPro).
But I am able to use your second suggested method, exporting to *.mbox format. The town attorneys insist on doing any redactions with their own system anyway, so that should work out.
Now the one missing piece would be how, when I send an email using my town address, to select that it be simultaneously copied to a folder or mailbox “town emails sent,” for future public document requests, so I have them all in one place already. It would be nice to have the option for that not to happen automatically, because I’m typically required to save only emails that I send to other town officials, not necessarily to private third parties. Is there a way to somehow specify “copy to saved box” using the BCC field? Thanks.
Hi Hoagie,
here is the developer of Mail Archiver. My software allows you to archive selected mailboxes from Gmail to PDF. Automatically, too, if you want. 10.8 is way too old, though, for newer versions of Mail Archiver.
Regards
Beatrix Willius
Thank you, Beatrix, Mail Archiver looks like it could be helpful in my case, though I have found a system that works okay for now (copying each email to a “save” folder when I send it). For reference, if I were to want to use Mail Archiver, what is the oldest Mac OS it runs on? (I didn’t find that on your website.)
I have to disagree with your recommendation of Horcrux. It might be fine for small Gmail accounts, but I have 3+ GB of email and haven’t had a successful backup in over a week. In addition, there have been bugs that have caused it to not backup all emails. When running, it slows my computer to a crawl and makes apps unresponsive. Look elsewhere if you are a power Gmail user.
Good to know, thanks! We hadn’t tested it, but were just basing the mention on its feature set.
No worries. I’ve been putting in support tickets with the developer. If things change for the better, I’ll post an update.
With the update to Horcrux that was released on Sept. 9, I’ve had a successful backup every day. The developer claims to have reduced memory usage by 90%, and that seems to be true. My computer no longer crawls when a backup is happening. At this point, I would say that Horcrux works well and, if it doesn’t, the developer is open to feedback.
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