Sending files by email is one of the most convenient ways to transfer important information if it is not too heavy. We can receive by email the bills of electricity, water, work documents, deliveries of students from the university or institute or even photographs and videos that someone sends us by this means so that they do not lose quality. Therefore, this is how you can easily download attachments in Gmail from your computer or mobile phone.
Whether it is a single document or there are several, downloading attachments in Gmail is very simple and will only take a few seconds to do.
Download files from Gmail
When we receive an email in Gmail we can see if there are attachments at the bottom of the page. Generally, we have three options :
- Download the file one by one
- Download all files in a compressed file
- Automatically transfer them to Google Drive
All these options are allowed from the email itself, from the Gmail tool whether you open it in the browser or open it on your mobile phone. But we always have to go mail to mail opening the different attachments that there are. That is, we can download all the files from a single email, even if they are two, six, seven, eight or twelve. Just hit the download button in the upper right corner of the screen.
Google also allows us to consult the files without having to download them. Especially in the case of documents, photographs, etc. You just have to “click” on the file in question and it will open in a preview where you can zoom in, zoom out, turn the pages or decide what to do with it: download, print, save in Google Drive, open in documents of Google or view details (type of file you just opened and exact document size)
Change download location
When you download a document, it will automatically be saved in the “Downloads” folder on your computer unless you have another folder configured in your browser. If you want to change it, you can do it from Google Chrome:
- Open the browser
- Tap on the three dots in the upper right corner
- Open browser settings
- In the menu on the left, drop down Advanced settings
- Open here Downloads
At the top we have the usual download location and we can touch “Change” to choose any other folder that we have on the computer. But you can also choose to have Google Chrome ask you whenever you download something. Check the switch next to “ Ask where each file will be saved before downloading ” and a pop-up window will appear asking you where you want to store any photos or documents that you download through the browser.
Download bulk files
There are times when Gmail does not allow us to do everything from the tool itself: if you want to download all the files that are in your email account or if you want to download attachments from several emails at the same time. For example, you have received six emails with documents from the same person and you want to download them all … Generally we must do it one by one. But there are some tricks.
This can have its risks: you might get spam and virus attachments and automatically download them, which would be a problem. Luckily it is a rare risk because generally you will be able to choose from whom are the emails that you are going to download files from (you choose people you trust, for example) or you block recipients from whom you do not want (there is always some heavy or heavy that sends us information, files or documents that we do not ask for)
Another “problem” that we may encounter is giving access to our data to a third-party tool. We have to give permission to access our content, our emails or the files we receive, so it may be an option not recommended for those who take maximum care of their privacy. If this does not worry you too much, we explain how to download files from several messages or how to download all files from Gmail from time to time.
Multiple message attachments
If you have received six or seven emails with documents that you want to save, the normal thing is that we go one by one downloading. But, luckily, although Google does not give us the option to do it in a single step, we can automatically download attachments from various Gmail messages step by step. We simply have to install a specific tool: Mail Attachment Downloader. We can connect with our Gmail account and download several different files from several different emails. We will buy time.
To start using Mail Attachment Downloader , the first thing we have to do is download the tool and install it on our computer, something that we can do completely free of charge , since it offers a free version for Windows that we access from its website. Although there is a paid pro version, it will be worth us with the free version that is compatible with Windows operating systems that are equal to or greater than Windows 7.
Once we install and launch the application on our desktop, we will see that it has an easy-to-use interface. The first thing we have to do is indicate the Gmail account from which we want to automatically download the attachments of several emails. For this we will have to indicate a series of data, as you can see in the screenshot:
- Email account address
- co ntraseña
- Type of mail server to connect (Gmail, Outlook, AOL …)
Next, we can also indicate the path where we want the attached files to be downloaded to our hard drive. Choose a specific folder if you want to have them located on your computer. When we have it, we will have to choose the filters that we want to apply or that we can ignore.
Filters
The filters of this tool allow us, for example, to download only files that are of a specific type : movies, images, music, documents, others. So we can, for example, choose to download only PDF documents but not JPG or GIF images or videos that take up too much.
Another filter that we can use is that it allows us to choose which emails we want to download and which ones we don’t. That is, you can choose to download only the emails of the person you want and you can even filter by the title of the message, the body of the text, etc. Or we can choose how often we want to automatically download these files from email.
Connect and download
With everything configured to our liking, we can test if the settings we have made work correctly by clicking on the Connect and Download button shown in the upper right. Automatically, we will see how the process of scanning messages that comply with our filters begins and that it will automatically download all the attachments of those messages in the indicated path of our hard drive.
All mail files
Another option we have is to download all the mail files from Gmail every so often. If you usually receive important documents by email but you don’t have time to review one by one, you can configure a tool to download them for you from time to time automatically.
We can do it with a free tool that works as a Google Chrome extension: Save Emails and Attachments . The first thing to keep in mind is that it is a useful process to use from the browser. And that you must have Google Chrome installed and used as the main browser.
If all this is true, we can download it. Download and add the tool from Google Chrome tools. What the tool does is, basically, “remove” our attachments from the mail and take them to Google Drive so that we are the ones who have everything organized and decide what we want to store or what can be automatically deleted.
When opening the add-on, a window will be displayed where it is possible to establish the rules and indicate the characteristics that the email messages must meet in order for the attached files to be downloaded:
- Specific label of the messages (if you have them)
- Whose
- For whom
- Business
- Words that include
- Words that do not include
- Received from the day …
- Received before the day …
- Download body text YES or NO
- Download attachments YES or NO
Once you have it and have filled in the data, you will have to choose the specific Google Drive folder in which you want the data to be stored. In this way, it is also possible to indicate that we only want to save the attachments of messages from a certain sender , those received on a specific date , have a certain subject , etc.
