Google Group Backups

[CrimsonWarTusk]

Good afternoon,

Recently it was shared that we should be able to backup a Google Group and restore it to another Google Group.  I do not believe this is possible and wanted to make sure that my understanding of the tool is not incorrect.  Am I wrong?

Thank you for any assistance you can provide.

CWT

[Jay Lee]

Google APIs allow migrating emails into a group but not migrating them out.

You can however use Google Takeout to export messages from a group.

Jay

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[CrimsonWarTusk]

Thank you for confirming Jay.

I spoke with Google and they did mention Google Takeout, but they also stated that an Admin cannot just export all of the emails/conversations out as Google Takeout will export different data based on who performs the export.  I plan to call them back today to re-confirm whether or not this is accurate, but when we did a Google Takeout export the CSV file we acquired had little in it (even though I was a member of the Google Group).  They also mentioned that the exported data is not something that can be imported into another Google Group.

The goal is to export all of the data from one Tenant's Google Group and import it into another Tenant's Google Group and there doesn't seem to be a process to accomplish this.  How are people achieving this goal or are they just exporting the data and utilizing it as an archive file that is referred to as needed by the users that export it?  Can I as a GA export all data and just share the file?  Going into this it seemed like such an easy ask, but the deeper I've gone it seems less and less doable.

Thank you again for your response as I very much appreciate it.  I will also reply to this thread once I get an answer from Google.

CWT

[Ian Crew]

Most folks I’ve talked to either just rename the group or just turn off the ability to send to the old group, but keep it around for reference purposes for a while….

It’s been this way for many, many years, so it seems very likely that it’s an intentional decision on Google’s behalf to not facilitate Group archive exports, for whatever reason…

Cheers,

Ian

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Ian Crew Solutions Architect Productivity & Collaboration Services Information Services and Technology

[Jerry Wang]

There is no easy way to backup Google groups.   However, there is a workaround by using CubeBackup.  For more information, see https://www.cubebackup.com/docs/tutorials/google-group-backup/

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[Jonathan Ascencio]

Did you ever get an update?

[Ian Crew]

Google hasn’t really invested in Groups at all in the past 3-5 years, and the inability to export messages from a group archive has been a pain point since at least 2016 in my personal experience.  

I honestly wouldn’t hold out any hope of them changing/updating this. 

I imagine that if you looked, you might be able to find a screen-scraping-based method of doing it somewhere on GitHub or similar. That might be your best bet. 

My 2 cents, at least,

Ian

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Ian Crew

Architect, Communication and Collaboration Services
Productivity & Collaboration Services
Berkeley IT

University of California, Berkeley

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[Jonathan Ascencio]

Sadly..Google API is very limited and years behind..

I was trying to migrate one Google group from one tenant to another seems like it’s just not possible to get those messages moved over

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[Ian Crew]

Yup, you're pretty much exactly right, at least as far as I'm aware. 

Doing a quick search, there are a few scraping-based methods (using selenium and similar) at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23522705/download-all-messages-from-a-google-group, but since they're based on scraping the web version of the archive, they're probably not going to be perfect (or quick).

SIGH!

Ian

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Ian Crew

Architect, Communication and Collaboration Services
Productivity & Collaboration Services
Berkeley IT

University of California, Berkeley

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[Jonathan Ascencio]

Ah…GitHub shows as deprecated since Google doesn’t support it anymore…

Have you tried Google Takeout? 

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[Ian Crew]

No, I haven’t tried Takeout, sorry.

(And Google has never supported exporting from Groups. The Selenium-based scripts are most definitely a hack…)

Cheers,

Ian

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[Jay Lee]

Org-wide Takeout will give you mboz files of the group archive:

https://support.google.com/a/answer/100458?hl=en

Jay

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[Jay Lee]

Actually as a regular user you may be able to export groups archive for groups you are a member of: 

https://support.google.com/groups/answer/9975859?sjid=4842189409686023197-NA&visit_id=638542675635894360-1135382021&p=groups_takeout&rd=1#zippy=%2Cinformation-about-you%2Cinformation-about-groups-you-own

Jay

[Jonathan Ascencio]

I’m a super admin for the both Google Tenants, as a regular user I just am not sure if going a Takeout would export all messages historically or only ones that I (my account) was associated with (CC/BCC/Sender)

I have never done a takeout, especially org wide. Would MBOZ files list out each group in its own file? To be able to import/upload to the target tenant’s Google Group?

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[jre...@challiance.org]

Google Vault lets you export Groups now, as either PST or MBOX. I've found MBOX easier to deal with when having to import things back in, but maybe I'm just out of the loop with options for imports, I mainly only use Vault + Jay's awesome GYB.

Vault is like the big boy version of Takeout. The problem is it's locked behind certain licensing levels. Some people may already have it and not realize, or may have a cheaper upgrade path to it, I'm not sure: https://support.google.com/vault/answer/2557687?hl=en

Good luck,

Z