Born almost as a joke on the initiative of a Google employee on the occasion of a fish in April (2004), Gmail has become over time the most used email service in the world, both because it can save attachments in its free cloud space, especially for its many functions. As explained on more than one occasion, Gmail can now be used as an email program installed on a PC, because it can be used with any email address (not necessarily of the @ gmail.com type) and because it also works offline, without internet connection. The ability of the Gmail site to work even without an internet connection allows you to read the e-mail messages received and also to prepare messages to be sent by writing them in the email writing editor. Gmail Offline takes advantage of the ability to cache files in Google Chrome and also allows you to open attachments, which are also synchronized on your computer.
Gmail Offline, available for years as an extension for Google Chrome, has now become an internal function of the site of the new Gmail and allows you to synchronize messages and save emails on your PC (the extension for Chrome is no longer needed).
Gmail Offline is an application for the Google Chrome browser, to be installed separately in order to read, reply, organize and archive e-mails without an internet connection. In this way, all recent emails will be synchronized and saved on your computer, not all, but only those of the last 7 days, plus all those in the Specials folder. Those put in the trash and spam emails are never synced. It is possible to increase the synchronization time in order to save older messages on the PC by going to Settings on Gmail Offline, using the Download X mail option weeks or months ago .
With Gmail offline it is also possible to add to the messages, which will be sent as soon as the PC in use goes back online, attachments for a maximum size of 5MB up to a maximum of 25 MB in total for all the emails prepared. As for the attachments, you can also save them in Google Drive and then activate Google Drive offline to synchronize the files uploaded to the internet on your computer, so you can access, open, download and edit them even without an internet connection and even without installing the Google Drive client program.
In the new Gmail, as mentioned above, it is not necessary to install extensions or additional applications to save and synchronize the emails on PC, because Gmail Offline is a function integrated in the website, even if it can only be used on Chrome and not on other web browsers . To activate Gmail Offline in the new Gmail, just press the gear button at the top right, go to Settings and then find the column with the word Gmail Offline . You can then activate the only option present here, " Activate offline mail ".
Subsequently, you can change the synchronization options, to save the messages of the last 7, 30 or 90 days and the one to also keep the attachments or exclude them. You can also check the space used by Gmail offline on your computer (which should not exceed 95 GB). You will also have to choose whether to delete the data saved by Gmail in case of disconnection from the Google account or whether to keep it on the PC. You can also delete messages saved from Gmail offline from your PC manually, by going to Chrome Settings, to the Advanced section> Content settings > Cookies > show all cookies > Remove all .
Other ways of saving and synchronizing Gmail emails on PC are email programs like Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird, or even a program like MailStore Backup to backup Email on PC.
We also remind you that the offline option is also available from Google Drive and Google Calendar, simply by enabling reading on the computer from the gear icon at the top right.
Thanks to Google Drive it is also possible to save the attachments received in Gmail.
