Here’s How You Can Quickly Get Your Data from Google MBOX into Outlook.
Are you an Outlook user who just downloaded the .zip or .mbox file from Google? Then you must be wondering how you can open it in Outlook. Here’s how you can use the Google MBOX file (from Google Takeout) in your Outlook Windows and Mac version.
Import Google MBOX in Outlook
This post focuses on the best way you can use Google MBOX into Outlook. But before we talk about that, here is some vital information about Google Takeout, MBOX file, and more. This is essential for you to know.
What is Google Takeout?
In 2011, Google brought an excellent and much appreciated service to let users download their data from any or all of the Google services into a local file. The team behind this service is called “Google Data Liberation Front”. And they besides their heroic name, their services/features have been quite excellent as well.
In this day and age, the data privacy is one of the biggest concern of all users. They are tech savvy or just basic users, who uses computer. Google Data Liberation Front is a much right step ahead to get users feel secure and reliable with their personal information.
Google Data Backup
With this features called “Google Takeout”. You can easily download your data like emails, contacts, blogs from blogger, bookmarks, calendar, all Chrome related data, all files and folders from Google Drive, and more. You select the type of data you want to archive into a local file. Then Google will process all of it in the background and will notify you via email when the file is ready to download.
You can choose to download the file either in .zip or .tgz. It has also an option to choose the size of the file (larger files will be split).
.zip and .tgz are standard compressed file formats that can be opened through applications like WinRAR.
But here’s the problem. Inside the compressed files (.zip or .tgz), there are specific type of information that you selected for archiving. When you open the Google’s file using WinRAR, you will find different files inside them.
Some type of data can be downloaded in simple files that can be opened through default apps in Mac or Windows. Like contacts can either be downloaded in comma separate values (CSV) or vCard format. Both of these formats are standard and are used in almost all operating systems and programs that deal with contacts. So, they are not going to be a problem.
But items like emails may have another story.
GMail Backup into MBOX file
Google archives your folders from Gmail into MBOX file. If you have selected your Gmail messages to be archived and downloaded, you will find an *.mbox file inside your *.zip file.
The problem with MBOX is that it cannot be opened in Outlook, Mac or Windows. Even though MBOX too is quite generic format supported by many email clients and programs, like Mac Mail and Thunderbird. It’s still not compatible with your Outlook client. Outlook in Windows uses proprietary PST format and Outlook in Mac uses OLM format.
This can be frustrating for Outlook users if they didn’t know this already before using Google Takeout feature.
There are third-party apps to view MBOX files. But they are just for viewing the content inside them. They cannot be used to import in bulk to any of the proper email software programs like Outlook. And in most cases, many people are looking just for that.
So, what can be done: How to get the Google MBOX in Outlook?
Do not worry. If you just waited hours for Google to generate your MBOX file with thousands of emails in them and you are an Outlook user, the next section is for you.
Firstly, let’s get one unfortunate fact out of the discussion: there’s no way you can force Outlook client to import or read MBOX file. It’s just not possible. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get the data in MBOX in Outlook in one way or the other, and that’s what the rest of the article talks about.
Converting MBOX into PST
The only option is to convert MBOX to PST, where PST is short for ‘Personal Storage Table’. It is a native and proprietary file format used by Outlook in Windows. And the bonus for converting MBOX to PST is that you can also use the PST in Mac Outlook for importing data.
However, converting MBOX to PST is not as simple as renaming the file’s extension from *.mbox to *.pst. What you need is a powerful and precise converter that can extract the information cleanly and put it into PST files.
Users often share frustrating stories about how the newly generated PST files that are supposed to be storing the same data that was in MBOX aren’t accurate. What they are experiencing is called data integrity error, meaning, a lot of information is missing or not converted with correct structure. The worst offenders are graphical components (images and photos), email attachments, the folder hierarchy, any non-English text characters (Unicode format), and the email headers (especially in MIME format).
That’s where this option of converting MBOX to PST starts sounding intimidating to many, even IT experts.
Mail Extractor Pro to Convert Google MBOX into Outlook (PST)
But the truth is, you can convert Gmail MBOX to PST with 100% of your data integrity preserved. You just need a professional file converter that deals with your data carefully through precise algorithms and dedicated logic. There’s no other tool better than “Mail Extractor Pro,” as evident by many experts’ review and basic users’ experiences that are shared quite often.
It also helps tremendously that it is built by USL Software. It is the most known and reliable source of email migration tools and utilities.
“Mail Extractor Pro” not only has the advanced and sharp logic to extract the contents from MBOX to PST, it also offers an interface that can be used by anyone. It has a basic layout of features and steps you need to take to do this correctly. This allows even the most naïve and least experienced users to take benefits of a professional utility without efforts.
The tool makes it much simple and quick to get the Google MBOX into Outlook client (in both Mac and Outlook version). It also delivers precise output without any integrity errors.
If you haven’t downloaded the MBOX file with your emails from Google Takeout, do it here. Once you have the MBOX file, click the link here to download the setup for ‘Mail Extractor Pro’ for free. You can start by the free trial mode to use the tool yourself. It helps you to check out everything you need to, before activating.
If you are planning to import Google MBOX into Outlook, then try ‘Mail Extractor Pro’ today.