I'm an IT administrator at a mid-sized university, and we're currently working on an email archiving project as part of our annual user lifecycle management process. Every academic year, we deactivate the Google Workspace accounts of graduating students, retired faculty members, and staff who have left the institution. Before these accounts are removed, our records management policy requires us to create a complete offline archive of each mailbox.

This year, we need to export approximately 1,200 Google Workspace mailboxes to MBOX format. The archived mailboxes may need to be accessed later for compliance requests, audits, accreditation reviews, or internal investigations, so maintaining data integrity is a top priority.

Our main requirements are:

• Export all mailboxes in bulk instead of one account at a time.
• Preserve folder hierarchy, Gmail labels, email headers, timestamps, read/unread status, and attachments.
• Use an administrator account to manage the export rather than asking individual users to log in.
• Apply date filters so we can archive only the required academic years where necessary.
• Generate export logs or reports to verify that every mailbox has been successfully archived.
• Ensure no emails are skipped during the export process.

Initially, we considered Google Takeout, but it doesn't seem practical for an environment with over a thousand users. It would require individual account access or separate export requests for each mailbox, making the process difficult to manage and time-consuming for our IT team.

While researching alternative solutions, we came across the Aryson Google Workspace Backup Tool. Based on its documentation, it appears to support administrator-based authentication, bulk mailbox export to MBOX, selective backup options, and the preservation of mailbox structure and metadata. On paper, it seems like it could significantly reduce the administrative effort compared to manual exports.

Also Read: Export Google Workspace Emails to MBOX