Export gmail message subjects?

May 2, 2010 6:53 PM

Can you export filtered gmail message subject headings? I want to analyze e-mails sent to a list serv and looking through them on gmail is cumbersome. Can this be done on Outlook or Thunderbird?
posted by sandmanwv to Technology (8 answers total)

I have looked into this a couple of times and have found no answer. One possible answer is to set up an IMAP connection and do it through another email client, but it appears to work only when a fairly limited number of messages is involved.

I concluded that Google wants all of your information, and to that end offers a number of easy ways to get stuff into GMail, but wants to hoard it once it's in there.
posted by megatherium at 7:57 PM on May 2, 2010

Gmail supports access via both POP3 and IMAP, so if you have a suitable email client that understands SSL (or even one that doesn't) you should be able to download all your mail headers and munge them to your heart's content.

I have no idea why megatherium thinks there's a limit to the number of messages involved. I use Gmail via IMAP with Thunderbird, I have many folders with thousands of mails and I've had no more trouble with Gmail than with any other IMAP provider.
posted by flabdablet at 8:11 PM on May 2, 2010

If you want to use Google's filters instead of doing it client-side, just build filter rules that add a suitable tag to the mails you want, then download all those headers as an IMAP folder.
posted by flabdablet at 8:12 PM on May 2, 2010

Simple - download your emails using POP3 and then grep the fuck out of your mailbox files with regexes.
posted by turkeyphant at 8:20 PM on May 2, 2010

This isn't difficult. Use POP to pull the mail down with Thunderbird (leaving a copy on the server if you don't want to mess with the originals). The mail will all be stored in your thunderbird profile folder (location varies by OS).

Thunderbird stores it's mail in mbox format, which is just plain text. It's quite easy to parse with a few regexen and some basic scripting knowledge.
posted by chrisamiller at 8:23 PM on May 2, 2010

If you're doing it with Thunderbird and POP3, you can tell Thunderbird to load mail headers only: Account Settings -> (account name) -> Server Settings -> Fetch Headers Only. This will save loads of traffic.
posted by flabdablet at 10:32 PM on May 2, 2010

Thunderbird also stores IMAP messages in mbox files, for what it's worth; if you don't mark the folders concerned as available for offline use, then all that ends up inside those mbox files is headers. IMAP might be more useful to you than POP3 because it can pull mails from any folder (tag) in your Gmail account, not just your Inbox.
posted by flabdablet at 10:34 PM on May 2, 2010

http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail
posted by matholio at 4:06 AM on May 3, 2010