Drowning in Emails? I Built a Life Raft with Google's AI, and You Can Use It Too!
Are you constantly fighting the "Your storage is almost full" battle with Google? Do you have important emails you need to keep, but they're cluttering up your inbox and eating away at your precious storage space? I was in the exact same boat, and I’m thrilled to share the elegant solution I built.
The Problem: My Digital Filing Cabinet Was Overflowing
Like many of you, I use a specific Gmail label—in my case, one named "backup"—as a digital holding pen for important emails I need to archive. The plan was solid, but the execution was manual and tedious. Every so often, I'd have to remember to go in, save those emails somewhere, and then delete them from Gmail to free up space.
It was a chore I kept putting off. My "backup" label grew, my Google storage shrank, and the risk of losing something important in a cleanup mistake was always in the back of my mind. I needed a system that was automatic, reliable, and set-and-forget.
The Solution: An Automated Email-to-Drive Pipeline
I knew what I wanted: a script that could automatically:
Scan my Gmail for any email with the "backup" label.
Save each one as an individual
.emlfile (a universal format that preserves the original email perfectly).Place these files into a specific folder in my Google Drive called
My Drive/Backup.Once successfully saved, move the original email to the trash in Gmail to free up space.
This would create a perfect, browsable archive in my Drive and keep my Gmail lean and clean. The challenge? I needed the code to build it.
My "Aha!" Moment with Gemini
Instead of spending hours piecing together code snippets from forums, I turned to Google's AI, Gemini. I described exactly what I needed, and in a collaborative back-and-forth, we built the perfect script. It was like having a master coder on call.
We started with a basic version and refined it to make sure it was robust, handled errors, and saved the files exactly where I wanted them. You can see the entire creative process, from the initial idea to the final, polished code, right here:
Check out the full conversation and the final script here: https://g.co/gemini/share/2f9a5cc8c595
This link is a fantastic look at how you can use AI as a creative partner to solve real-world problems.
Want to Use This For Your Own Inbox?
If you're facing the same email overload problem, this script could be your answer. It's completely customizable—we can change the Gmail label name and the Google Drive folder to match whatever system you use.
Setting it up involves a simple copy-and-paste into Google Apps Script and a one-time authorization. If that sounds intimidating, don't worry!
If you'd like to implement this for your own account, just reach out to me, Stefan, and I'd be happy to help you get it up and running. Stop letting email clutter stress you out and start automating your archive today!