Skip to content
Pulse Docs

Import Your Gmail Archive

Importing your Gmail archive lets you seed Pulse with years of newsletter history in one step, rather than waiting weeks for forwarding to accumulate.

Before you start — set up the pulse_newsletter label

Section titled “Before you start — set up the pulse_newsletter label”

Google Takeout can export a single Gmail label as an MBOX file. By targeting only pulse_newsletter, you get a clean newsletter-only archive instead of your entire mailbox.

If you haven’t created the label and filter yet, follow Option 1 in Add Your First Source to set up the Gmail filter. When creating the filter, check Also apply filter to matching conversations — this retroactively tags all your existing newsletters so they’ll be included in the Takeout export.

If you’d prefer to export all mail and let Pulse filter it, you can skip this step — just leave the label selection at the default (“All Mail”) in Step 1 below.

Step 1 — Export from Google Takeout

Section titled “Step 1 — Export from Google Takeout”

  1. Go to takeout.google.com

  2. Click Deselect all — you only need Mail for this export.

    Takeout products page showing Deselect all button

  3. Scroll down to Mail and check it.

    Mail row checked with Multiple formats and All Mail data included buttons

  4. (Optional) Click Multiple formats to confirm that email messages will export as MBOX — this is the default and doesn’t need to be changed.

    Mail formats dialog showing MBOX for email messages

  5. Click All Mail data included to open the label selection options.

    Mail row with All Mail data included button

  6. Uncheck Include all messages in Mail, then check pulse_newsletter.

    Mail content options dialog with Include all messages in Mail checked

    pulse_newsletter label checked with OK button

  7. Click OK. The Mail row now shows “1 label selected”.

    Mail row showing Multiple formats and 1 label selected badges

  8. Click Next step.

    Next step button at the bottom of the page

Step 2 — Configure the export

Section titled “Step 2 — Configure the export”

Leave Frequency as Export once, File type as .zip, and size as 2 GB.

  1. Click Create export.

    Delivery options page showing Export once, .zip, and Create export button

  2. Google will email you when the archive is ready. Small archives (under ~1,000 emails) typically finish within a few minutes; larger ones can take several hours.

    Google Takeout ready email with download link

Step 3 — Upload to Pulse

Section titled “Step 3 — Upload to Pulse”

  1. Open the email from Google and click the download link. Save the .zip to your computer.

  2. Extract the .zip — inside, find a file named something like Takeout/Mail/pulse_newsletter.mbox.

  3. In Pulse, go to Settings → Import archive.

  4. Choose the .mbox file and click Upload.

    Archive import section showing Choose File and Upload button

  5. Processing runs in the background — you can close the tab once the upload is confirmed. Your next digest will include the imported content.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”
  • Add Your First Source — set up auto-forwarding so new newsletters arrive automatically
  • Settings — manage your ingest preferences and persona config