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Does anybody know the file format specifications of Google Takeout exports?

I see that the GMail export *.mbox file can be read by Thunderbird, so I guess the spec is publicly available?

Thank you! J.

fixer1234
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Jan
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1 Answers1

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The didenko / mboxrd GitHub says that Google Takeout uses the mboxrd format:

Based on experimentation it looks like Google uses the mboxrd dialect of mbox format with CRLF lines as discussed at the Wikipedia mbox article

Looking through my own Google Takeout .mbox file, this seems correct. For instance, the .mbox file contains:

Hello,

>From the limited error message, it appears that one or more of the files
you are dragging/dropping into Meshroom are not images.
You will need to provide a lot more details, such as the Command Line
window output (if there is any), and log files.

while the Gmail web interface displays:

Hello,

From the limited error message, it appears that one or more of the files you are dragging/dropping into Meshroom are not images.
You will need to provide a lot more details, such as the Command Line window output (if there is any), and log files.

The .mbox file has:

work and interaction with the community.

>>From today till June 7th is "community bonding period". Xingyu and Tirth
have already been contributing for a little while, but please do give them

while the Gmail web interface displays:

work and interaction with the community.

>From today till June 7th is "community bonding period". Xingyu and Tirth
have already been contributing for a little while, but please do give them

(So this was likely mangled at some other point in the mailing list chain, and Google is still adding an extra > according to mboxrd rules.)

endolith
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