Wednesday, April 16, 2014

How to Save your Gmail Attachments to Google Drive Automatically

Your email messages in Gmail have attachments – images, documents, videos, etc. – and you can automatically save them all to a specific folder inside Google Drive using the Send to Google Drive. The latest version lets you specify a list of file types and only file attachments belonging to those types will be saved to your Google Drive.

If you haven’t used Send to Google Drive before, here’s how it works.

You specify a Gmail label name in the sheet and the script will scan all your existing and incoming email messages inside that label for attachments. You can say “inbox” to monitor the inbox folder, or specify a user label or say “all” to monitor every folder in your Gmail mailbox. If the script finds an attachment, the file is downloaded to your Google Drive.

You neither have to install any browser extensions nor do you have to grant access to your Gmail or Google Drive to a third-party. And since Google Drive synchronizes with your mobile device and desktop, the saved email attachments will instantly become available on all your other devices.

Save files attachments from Gmail to any Google Drive folder.

Save Gmail Attachments to Google Drive

Here’s a step by step guide on how you can setup the Send to Google Drive program for your Gmail account. It takes less than a minute.

Click here to create a copy of the Send to Google Drive sheet in your Google Drive.
Open the sheet and you should see a new Gmail Attachments menu at the top (see screenshot). Choose Authorize (Step #1) and grant the necessary permissions. This is an open-source Google Script) that runs in your own Google account and no one else will have access to any of your data.
Click the Gmail Attachments menu again and select Run (step #2). Close the Google sheet and the script will begin downloading attachments from Gmail to your Google Drive in the background.

The program will monitor the specified Gmail label every five minutes and as soon as it finds a message that has attachments, it will automatically save the file(s) to a folder in your Google Drive.

Once the attachments have been saved, a new label — Processed — is applied to the Gmail message indicating that the message has been processed by the script. It saves all types of attachments but you can also specify a list of extensions separated by commas.

If you would like to stop the script later, open the same Google Sheet and choose Uninstall from the Gmail Attachments menu.

Send to Google Drive – Premium

The premium version supports even more features:

Whitelist Filetypes – You can specify a list of filetypes and the script will only save attachments that are the specified type. For instance, you can say jpg,gif,png to save only image attachments or say all to save every single file attachment irrespective of the file type.
Nested Google Drive Folders – You can choose to save email attachments in a single folder or specify sub-folders per Gmail label. For instance, say \\Main Folder\\Sub Folder to save files in the sub folder under the main folder.
Nested Gmail Labels – It can monitor Gmail messages that are under nested Gmail labels or folder.
Monitor Multiple Labels – While the free version only supports one Gmail label, the premium version can help you save email attachments from one or more Gmail labels.
Google Drive Organized – The free version dumps all Gmail attachments to one Google Drive folder while the premium version organizes them in sub-folders thus keeping your Drive cleaner and more organized.
Premium Support – You can opt for the $49.99 edition for instant support.