How to backup and export Google Groups conversations.

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Google Groups are a convenient way to easily join a community or perform collaborative tasks by creating and sharing conversations with a group of contacts. However, once a conversation thread or group is deleted, it is gone forever. There is no way to recover it through Google Groups.

Retrieve a Google Groups conversation

Fortunately, as an email-based online forum, all Google Groups are assigned a unique email address (e.g. [email protected]). All conversations are listed as separate email threads that are automatically sent to members of the group, with the subject of the email the same as the title of the conversation.

• To restore a deleted Google Groups conversation, you need only find the email thread in a group member's mailbox and reply to it. A new conversation will be automatically created in the original group.
• If the whole group has been deleted, you can simply create a new one and forward all the original messages to the new group email address. This will restore all conversations to the new group.

A reliable backup for Google Groups

However, data protection in Google Workspace is still vulnerable to a number of possible risk factors, and many companies prefer to control their own backup for Google Groups, as well as the other essential business data in their organizations.

As a Google Cloud partner, CubeBackup is committed to providing a reliable self-hosted backup solution for your valuable Google Workspace data, and Google Groups conversations are no exception.

Using CubeBackup's powerful granular search features, it is easy to track down and Restore specific conversations, even after they have been deleted. CubeBackup also offers an Export feature to help download and export the conversations to your local machine anytime you need.

Restore a Google Group

1. Conversations in Google Groups are automatically included in CubeBackup's Gmail backup. As long as there is at least one active backup user included in the group, all conversations will be safely stored in CubeBackup.

2. To restore messages from a specific group, simply go to the CubeBackup web console, open the RESTORE page of a group member, and search for the group email address. This will bring up a list of all conversations from that group.

   Tips:
   (1) If you do not specify the group email address when creating a group, by default, Google Groups will use the group name, replacing spaces with hyphens. For example, [email protected] as the default address for the group cube backup.
   (2) Since the group email address does not represent an actual user, it cannot be backed up directly. The group must be reconstructed through email messages. We recommend searching for messages using the account of a group owner or an early subscriber to the group, so that group conversations can be reconstructed from the beginning.

3. Once the list of conversations is found, simply select all search results and click the Restore button to restore them to any active account in your organization. They will be added to that user's mailbox with a label listing the date and time of restoration (e.g. Restored 2021-08-11 10:15:02 am).

4. Finally, using the label created in step 3, select the restored messages and forward them to the group email address of your new group. If the group is relatively small, the messages can be forwarded one by one to the new group; however, if the group is larger, we recommend creating a filter in Gmail to automatically forward the restored messages.

Export a Google Group

CubeBackup allows you to easily download and export all messages in a Google Group to a local machine.

1. Conversations in Google Groups are automatically included in CubeBackup's Gmail backup. As long as there is at least one active backup user included in the group, all conversations will be safely stored in CubeBackup.

2. To export messages from a specific group, simply go to the CubeBackup web console, open the RESTORE page of a group member, and search for the group email address. This will bring up a list of all conversations from that group.

   Tips:
   (1) If you do not specify the group email address when creating a group, by default, Google Groups will use the group name, replacing spaces with hyphens. For example, [email protected] as the default address for the group cube backup.
   (2) Since the group email address does not represent an actual user, it cannot be backed up directly. The group must be reconstructed through email messages. We recommend searching for messages using the account of a group owner or an early subscriber to the group, so that group conversations can be reconstructed from the beginning.

3. Once the list of conversations is found, simply select all search results and click the Export button to download a ZIP file to your local machine.

   Note: The Gmail messages are exported as Mbox files and can be opened by Apple Mail and other mail clients. If you need to open it in Microsoft Outlook, please follow these instructions convert the Mbox file to an EML file.