Email, Messaging, & Video Calls > Email How to Back Up Gmail Filters Save your Gmail filters offline to avoid losing them By Heinz Tschabitscher Heinz Tschabitscher Writer University of Vienna A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on November 18, 2021 Tweet Share Email Tweet Share Email Email Gmail Yahoo! Mail What to Know Go to Settings > See all settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses. Check the boxes on the filters you want to save.Select Export, give the new XML file a name, and select Save.To import filters, go to Settings > See all settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses > Import filters and upload the XML file. Exporting your Gmail filters might not be something you thought about when you first created them, but if you have a lot or you find them super useful, you might think again about saving them. Whatever your reasoning is, you can back up your Gmail rules to an XML file in just a few steps. How to Export Your Gmail Filters You need access to the Filters and Blocked Addresses area of your Gmail account to create an offline copy of your Gmail filters. Select the Settings gear icon in the upper-right corner of Gmail. Select See all settings. Choose Filters and Blocked Addresses along the menu at the top. Put a check in the box next to the one or more rules that you want to save. To save all of them, scroll to the very bottom and choose All. Select Export at the bottom of the list of Gmail filters. Name the file something memorable, and choose a folder to save it in. If you're exporting lots of rules separately (i.e., not in the same file), be sure to use names that make sense to you. You might even group the individual rules into separate folders so that you know what they're for when you come back to use them. Select Save to download the Gmail filter(s) as an XML file. How to Import Gmail Filters Whoever uses the filters backup can't just open the file and expect it to load into their Gmail account. There's a very specific process to how this works. See Step 2 above to reach the Filters and Blocked Addresses page. Choose Import filters at the bottom of the page. Select Choose File and then upload the XML file. Choose Open file off to the right to get a list of the filters in the backup. Put a check in the box next to the filters you want to import into your Gmail account. Select All to pick all of them. Select Create filters to transfer all of the Gmail rules into your account. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. You're in! Thanks for signing up. There was an error. Please try again. Thank you for signing up! Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit