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Email

How to find and size your Gmail (Google Workspace) data.

Find how many gigabytes of email Gmail holds across your Google Workspace users, and how Vault and the Data Export tool work.

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Find how much you have

  1. Sign in to the Google Admin console with an admin who has the Reports administrator privilege. Go to Menu, then Reporting, then User Reports, then Accounts.

  2. Choose Latest to see the newest data available for each column. Google warns that you will not see complete data up to the present day, and an asterisk beside a column name means that column may be older than the others.

  3. Click Download, pick the columns, including Gmail storage used (MB), and send the result to Google Sheets or a CSV. Exports hold up to 100,000 rows. Add up the Gmail storage for the users whose mail you would license, which may be your estimating, sales, dispatch and claims mailboxes and shared inboxes rather than every user, then convert MB to GB and say which conversion you used.

  4. Cross-check on the Storage page under Menu, then Apps, then Storage, which needs the Storage administrator privilege. Hover over Gmail at the top of the page for that service's total. Users with less than 1 MB show as 0 MB, and changes can take up to 24 hours to appear.

  5. For a message count, a developer can call the Gmail API's users.getProfile for a mailbox, which returns messagesTotal and threadsTotal. The Accounts report also has a Total emails column, but that counts mail sent and received, not what sits in the mailbox today.

  6. To find where the mail starts, ask your longest-serving user to search Gmail with the before: operator, for example before:2018/01/01, and move the year back until nothing comes up. Note that date as the start of your records.

What to put on your intake

Your intake has five boxes for each system. Here is what goes in each one for Gmail (Google Workspace).

What does it hold?
Business email: customer inquiries, quotes and proposals, vendor, partner and carrier threads, scheduling and approval messages. Say which mailboxes are in scope, for example: sales, support, claims or dispatch mailboxes plus the shared info@ inbox.
Data types
Text for message bodies. Attachments such as photos and PDFs are a separate decision, so add Image only if you are willing to license them.
How big is it?
Choose GB and enter the total Gmail storage used for the in-scope users. Put the message count in the description if a developer pulled it. Say that the figure includes attachments.
Verified or estimated
Verified when it is the Accounts report total for exactly the users in scope. Estimated when you scaled up from a few mailboxes or relied on the Storage page rounding.
Records start
The date of the oldest message in the in-scope mailboxes. The Accounts report does not give it, so use the before: search above. If mail was migrated in from another system, say so.

Exporting the full history

If a buyer licenses your records, this is how the full history comes out of Gmail (Google Workspace).

  1. A buyer export happens only after a license is signed and the scope is agreed: which users or groups, which years, and whether attachments and labels are in. Separately, take your own copy now, because Google's Data Export tool leaves out Gmail if your Workspace subscription is canceled or suspended.

  2. For a targeted export, an admin with the Manage Matters, Manage Searches and Manage Exports privileges uses Google Vault. Open or create a matter, run a search, click Export and choose PST or mbox. Google suggests searching a few accounts at a time or splitting by date range if an export runs long, and says Vault stops an export that is unfinished after 24 hours, with partial results you can download and continue.

  3. A Vault export holds one message file per account, which becomes numbered zip files once an account passes 1 GB of PST or 10 GB of mbox. It also carries a metadata CSV and XML, a result-counts.csv with success counts per account, an error report and checksums. Exports are available for 15 days, then deleted.

  4. For a whole-domain copy, a super administrator uses the Data Export tool under Menu, then Data, then Data import & export, then Data export. Google says it exports the same data users can take through Takeout, plus admin-only data such as Vault-retained data (which needs Vault licenses), into zip files per user split by service. It becomes available no earlier than 48 hours after it starts, typically takes 72 hours and can take up to 14 days.

  5. For a single person's mail, that user can use Google Takeout. Labels are kept in an X-Gmail-Labels header in the downloaded file. This suits a few key users, not a whole company.

  6. Developers can read mail through the Gmail API instead. Under the license, names, addresses, phone numbers, account numbers and other identifiers are removed from message text before anything reaches a buyer, and attachments are excluded unless a specific package is agreed.

We only ask for an export after you sign a license and agree the scope. Sizing your data for the intake never needs one.

Limits to know

  • Google's storage FAQ counts messages and attachments, including Spam and Trash, toward Gmail storage, and most editions pool that storage with Drive and Photos across the organization. The Accounts report has a Gmail-only column, but its help page does not say whether Spam and Trash are in it, so treat the number as possibly higher than the mail you would license.
  • Auto-delete can quietly cap your history. Admins can set Gmail to delete messages older than a number of days, with a minimum of 30, and Google says permanently deleted messages cannot be retrieved. Ask your admin whether it has ever been turned on, and since when.
  • Deleted mail is short-lived. Messages sit in Trash for 30 days. After that an admin can restore them for 25 more days, but not mail deleted from Spam. Beyond that, Google says Vault may still have them if a retention rule or hold covered them, but Vault cannot put them back in the mailbox.
  • Deleting a user deletes their Gmail messages and attachments. Google says you can restore the account up to 20 days after deleting it, and that any Vault retention rules or holds on that user's data stop applying once the user is deleted. Check before offboarding anyone whose mail is in scope.
  • Vault is not meant for large-scale backup. Google says you can export for a limited number of accounts and one service at a time, with no scheduled exports, no more than 20 exports in progress across the organization, and export files that last only 15 days. Google says many Workspace editions include Vault licenses, while others offer it as an add-on, so confirm your edition.
  • The Data Export tool needs a super administrator account at least 30 days old with 2-Step Verification on, and Google Cloud turned on for the admin. Google says to contact Workspace support first if you have more than 1,000 users. Once started it cannot be canceled in the Admin console, and the default archive is deleted 60 days after the export begins. It excludes data deleted before the export unless Vault kept it.
  • Google Takeout cannot export Gmail by timeframe, the archive expires after about 7 days and can be downloaded 5 times, and Workspace admins can restrict downloads.
  • Client-side encrypted messages in a Vault mbox export need Google's decrypter utility, which Google labels beta, before anyone can read them.
  • The Gmail API limits each user to 6,000 quota units a minute per project, and reading one message with messages.get costs 20 units. That works out to at most about 300 messages a minute per user, so a big mailbox takes time. Google updated these limits on May 1, 2026, with older projects keeping their earlier quotas, and says going over quota is planned to incur charges later in 2026, so check the quota page for your project.

This guide isn't legal advice. Check your contracts, and any recording-consent rules that apply, with your own lawyer.

Why buyers value it

The inbox is where a lot of business work gets negotiated. At an agency, a brokerage or a software company's sales team that means the scope question, the quote, the pushback and the final go-ahead. At a roofing or restoration company it means the homeowner's first question, the estimator's number and the adjuster's supplement request. Often it all sits in one thread, written in plain language by the people involved and dated at every turn.

Buyers building quoting assistants, follow-up tools and negotiation agents want real business threads, not synthetic ones. The records are most useful when they can be tied to jobs, deals or tickets in your other systems, and when the in-scope mailboxes are business-only, with a clear start date.

What stays private

Names, email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses and signatures are removed from message bodies and headers before delivery, along with claim, policy, invoice and account numbers and any payment or bank details. Personal mail, HR and legal threads, and mailboxes of staff who are not in the agreed scope are excluded.

Attachments, including photos, signed contracts, vendor price lists and measurement reports, are excluded by default, since many belong to someone else. Your logins, user list, mail settings and filters are not part of the license.

Common questions

No. A super administrator can use the Data Export tool, whose requirements are a super administrator account at least 30 days old, 2-Step Verification and Google Cloud turned on. Vault licenses come in only if you want Vault-retained data in that export. It can take up to 14 days. Vault gives you a search you can narrow by account or date, PST or mbox files, and a metadata and count report, but it needs a Vault license and Google says it is not designed to be a backup tool. Many Workspace editions include it, so check yours.

For a handful of key mailboxes, yes. Takeout cannot limit Gmail to a date range, the download link expires in about 7 days, and an admin can restrict it, so for many mailboxes an admin-run export is easier to manage.

Probably not. Storage is pooled across Gmail, Drive and Photos, and Gmail's share includes attachments and everything in Spam and Trash. Use the Gmail storage column in the Accounts report, or hover over Gmail on the Storage page, and enter that number only for the mailboxes you would license.

Sources

Vendor documentation, checked . Screens and plans change, so if a step looks different in your account, check with Gmail (Google Workspace).

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