Import Emails From Google Workspace

01 Mar 2025 - sj, tags: archiving, insights, news, product

Install the google api python client

pip install google-api-python-client

Create a project, eg. “import-emails”

Click on “APIs & Services”, then “Enable APIs and Services”

Enable the “Gmail API” and “Admin SDK API”

Click on “APIs & Services”, then “Create credentials”, and select “Service account”

After creating it, click on the service account.

Select the “Keys” tab, click on “Add key” / “Create new key”. The key type shall be “JSON”, then save the json file.

We are going to impersonate users. To do that go Google Admin Console

Click on “Security”, then “Access and data control” and “API Controls”.

Then select “Manage Domain Wide Delegation”

Add the Service Account Client ID and authorize the following scopes:

https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.readonly
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly

Use your Google Workspace admin email (eg. admin@example.com) with the json credentials file you created above:

download-emails-google-workspace.py --admin admin@example.com --credentials import-emails-d25d9743f508.json

The script downloads emails to “emails/user@example.com” directory.

Then all you need to do is to import them:

chown -R piler:piler .
pilerimport -r -d emails/