How To Backup And Export Gmail Filters And Import Them On Another Email Account
Gmail filters are a real lifesaver for anyone who gets dozens of email every single day. Custom filters in Gmail allows you to manage and control the flow of incoming messages and apply custom rules automatically or on completion of a condition. You can use Gmail filters to automatically forward emails, mark them as spam, move them to a specific label, skip the inbox, send an auto response and lots of other actions.
The problem is – overtime the number of filters in your Gmail account can increase and it becomes really time consuming to set up the same Gmail filters in another email account, which you are going to create.
Example: Let’s say you have more than 20 active filters in your current Gmail account. You recently launched a new website or startup and want to use a fresh Gmail account with that website. At the same time, you want to download Gmail filters from the earlier account and restore it on the newer one.
One of the old school ways is to take a complete screen shot of your Filter’s page, remember the syntax and then create the filters manually on the newer account. However, here is another smart workaround to back up filters in Gmail.
Copy Gmail Filters From One Account And Restore On Another One
Open your Gmail account (also works with Google Apps), go to “Settings” and switch to the “Labs” tab. Find “Filter: Import/Export”, activate this Labs feature and click “Save changes” to activate the Labs feature.
When you are done activating the labs feature, go to Gmail “Settings” and switch to the filters tab again. Select the filters you want to download or backup and click “Export” at the bottom of the page.
This will save the syntax of Gmail filters to an XML document in your computer. Open your secondary Gmail account, activate the same “labs feature” again and you can use the “Import filters” link to migrate all the filters from one email account to another.
When you are done, be sure to deactivate the labs feature on both account’s because using a lot of Gmail labs feature may slow down the loading time of Gmail. Lastly, do not forget to delete the XML file from your computer’s hard drive because it may contain some critical information and forwarding address(s) which you won’t want other people to know.
As it turns out, transferring Gmail filters from one email to another is really easy and does not require any manual input whatsoever. What’s your preferred way to export Gmail filters ? let’s hear about them in the comments section.
