apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

If you use outlook, you can sync it to Gmail, too and that will automatically save to some folder on your computer. I'd imagine that any desktop e-mail program would be able to do the same thing, just set up a POP3 account in it.

that print-to-PDF only works natively on Macs, I think... My mom can't do it without buying some plugin... I think --

Tiamat_the_Red has it right:

1) Turn on POP3 in your Gmail account: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=13273

2) Download Thunderbird (or your client of choice).

3) Enter your Gmail account info in Thunderbird: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=86399

4) Run Thunderbird periodically to make sure your email is backed up.

Just configure Thunderbird or Outlook or Mail.app or whatever desktop email client of your choice to read you Gmail. Then use the export function of that client to save the emails.

How to connect email client to Gmail:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=75726

To export the email from Outlook:
http://kb.iu.edu/data/agnu.html

To export email from Thunderbird:
http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/faq#export

To export from Mail.app ( Apple Mail ):
http://koolinus.wordpress.com/2007/01/13/how-to-export-mail-folders-from-apples-mail/

You could also go the extra step and configure your mail client to use IMAP support in an email client like Thunderbird. ( I am sure Outlook and Mail.app support this too). More details here : Turn Thunderbird into an Ultimate GMAIL IMAP client

To the best of my knowledge IMAP will allow you to sync your mail very easily between multiple clients. So if you are using the web, your PC or your father's PC you see the same set of information everywhere. POP3 works only point to point with the potential to lose email between various places you check mail. Of course, don't forget to back up your email client.

gmail already is set up to archive all of your email. You never have to back it up. That is the whole idea behind gmail and what makes it different. instead of deleting emails that you want to keep for reference just click the archive button. You can access your archived emails in gmail by using the search bar. Just like you search for something on the internet. This is nice because you are then able to access any of the archived information from anywhere. Not just your computer. You can use this to store any type of info that you might want to access for anywhere. Just send yourself an email with the info and include keywords in the email. You can then access this info from work, home, school, vacation, any computer with internet access. Gmail will never delete these emails if you archive them. There is no need to archive them separately.

Thanks everyone! I had downloaded Thunderbird a LONG time ago when it was in beta and after a reformat forgot to redownload. I'm gonna try a bunch of these options and see what works best/ easiest to teach my technically challenged dad! :)