You will see how easy it is to save an email you have received or sent yourself from Gmail in PDF format, all with your Android smartphone. Here's how it's done.
Gmail is one of the most used email applications in the world, not only for its good design, good organization of emails and intuitive handling, but also for the options it offers.
This application offers a variety of nifty features, including the one we are talking about today, which is the ability to print or download emails in PDF format.
This is a really useful feature, since it helps us to save important messages for offline use, archive all kinds of correspondence or share with anyone an email in a simpler way and from many more media.
Let's skip the preamble and see how this transformation to PDF format works, as well as how we can store emails on our smartphone so as not to depend on the Internet if we want to consult an old one.
How to download an email from Gmail in PDF format:
- What is a PDF?
- How to download a PDF email from Gmail
- How to download emails and their attachments from Gmail on Android
What is a PDF?
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file type that has all the elements of a printed document as an electronic image that users can view, browse, print, or forward to another person.
PDF was developed by Adobe and was first seen in 1992. In the early years, PDF became popular mainly in desktop publishing workflows and competed with a variety of formats such as DjVu , Envoy , Common Ground Digital Paper or Farallon Replica.
They are based on the PostScript language. They started to become popular from 2008 and since then they have not stopped being more and more used by users, to the point that today it is a normal thing to go over and even create or modify files like these.
These types of files are extremely complete, since they can embed fonts so that they are available in any viewing location and can even include interactive elements, such as buttons to enter forms and to activate sound or video.
PDF files are useful for documents such as magazine articles, product brochures or flyers, as well as for downloading and printing, such as resumes, contracts and application forms. They also support the addition of digital signatures to authenticate the integrity of a digital document.
How to download a PDF email from Gmail
With Gmail you can download an email in PDF format, something that can be really useful.
The steps to download an email from Gmail to PDF are simple:
1. We launch the Gmail app on our Android device and open the email we want to save as PDF.
2. In the upper right corner of the application, we hit the 3-dot menu and select Print. If the email has more than one message, the option will be Print All.
3. Now we expand the drop-down menu in the upper left corner and select Save as PDF. Just below we will be able to see the number of copies, paper size, color, orientation, if it is two-sided or pages.
4. Once we set these options, we click on the PDF button with a blue-green circle background on the right side of the screen.
5. Next, we navigate to the directory where we want to save the PDF from inside our smartphone.
6. When it is decided all that is left is to click on the Save button.
7. Now that we have saved the email in our device's storage, we no longer need an Internet connection to view the email, since it is saved in the smartphone's internal storage and in the folder decided by us for it.
How to download emails and attachments from Gmail on Android
In addition to downloading a particular email that we have in Gmail in PDF format, we will also be able to download all emails thanks to the Google Takeout functionality, something that can be used both to do it on our Android and to use on a Windows computer.
The steps we must follow are as follows:
1. Log in to Gmail with the account from which you want to download the emails.
2. Click on our profile picture (top right).
3. Then click on Google Account.
4. Now we must move through the options that appear under the account name and click on Data and privacy.
5. We go down until we find Applications and services.
6. We move the applications until we see Gmail and if we do not see it, click on + (number of apps each one has), for example +3.
7. We go down again until we find Gmail.
8. Inside we will see the number of conversations, the ones in the inbox and the number of sent ones. Well, just below there is a button that says Download, which must be clicked.
9. Once we click on it we will see the Google Takeout sign.
10. We go down until we can click on Next step.
11. Now, if we go down, we can choose several parameters such as the Frequency (how often this copy should be made), something we should now keep on Export once, the type (which we leave on Zip) and the size (which we must choose which one we want, that is, the smaller, the more files will be generated. There is up to a maximum of 50 GB).
12. When we have decided we click on Create export.
13. Now we will see a sign telling us that the files are being prepared, something that can take hours or even days.
14. When the export is ready, we will be notified by email and then we can download it to our Android.
15. In this email we will only have to click on Download the files.
Now you not only know how to download an email in PDF format, but also how you can have on your smartphone a backup copy of all the emails you have received and sent.
These two Gmail solutions are extremely practical and we are sure that, now that we know how they work, we will use them from time to time.