Google now allows you to download Gmail messages, Calendar data

You can finally download a copy of your Gmail messages and Google Calendar data and store it in your archive or import it through a desktop mail client.

The ability to download Calendar data has been rolled out to all Gmail users, while the ability to download email messages would be rolled out over the next month, according to Google.

To download the data, users will need to go to the Google Accounts page, and then click the 'Download your data' link. They'll need to click on the 'Create an archive' button and select the type of data they wish to download.

Google will allow users to download all their mail messages or selectively download mail with specific labels. The mail data is downloaded in MBOX format. The MBOX format is is supported by common mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook 2011, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Apple Mail.

Google has also set special limits on how often you can export your Gmail messages. It allows you to export and download messages up to three times in a day, and up to seven times total per week.

After exporting, Gmail labels are preserved in a special X-Gmail-Labels header, in CSV format. Google says that while no mail client recognises this header at the moment, extensions could be written to enable use of this data.

Similarly, users can download all their calendars or select specific ones to download. Calendar data is downloaded in iCalendar format, which is a common format for storing calendar entries and supported by a number of popular web and desktop-based calendar programs.

"You can download all of your mail and calendars or choose a subset of labels and calendars. You can also download a single archive file for multiple products with a copy of your Gmail, Calendar, Google+, YouTube, Drive, and other Google data," said Google in a blogpost, announcing the feature.