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Convert Gmail Takeout Labels from Google Takeout MBOX files

author
Written By
Nick Rogers
Published On
May 24th, 2023
Reading Time
2 Minutes Reading

Most of the people face issues while convert Gmail Takeout Labels or Folders from exported Google Takeout ZIP file.

You first need to UNZIP this Google Takeout downloaded file and then you are able to see a MBOX file having all emails and folders inside it.

Now here is the major challenge.

How to convert Google MBOX file with all Labels or Folders intact.

To understand this, we checked the MBOX file in a Hex Editor and found that the content inside Google Takeout MBOX file is in Plain text format. To store details regarding Labels or Folders to which a email belongs to — Gmail uses a Special Header Tag — X-Gmail-Labels.

Now this X-Gmail-Labels stores all Labels or Folders for respective emails. A email can belong to multiple Labels too. So you can also see X-Gmail-Labels will have multiple Labels assigned to a set of email messages.

Most of the existing tools in the market fails to parse or correctly convert this Gmail Labels or Folders from Takeout files. The major reasons for same are like Email can use Different Encoding, Character Set. The standard pattern which email services follow to encode a email message using Non English Characters or Characters falling outside the range of ASCII is encapsulating them in a UTF8 format. Below is the format they follow

=?charset?encoding?encoded-text?=

We used and tested below tool for conversion of Google Takeout MBOX file with all Labels and it converts accurately all Labels. Most of the Labels are in Japanese and German Languages.

You need to download the software from
Free Download

Install it and then from the Open option you need to Select Google Takeout files.

google takeout converter

When you select requried Google Takeout MBOX file, you can see all Labels quickly loaded and displayed correctly.

google takeout preview

I am a forensicator having 11 years of digital forensics experience. I am here to share my knowledge and findings about unknown forensics findings. Stay tuned.