You open an old mission email and start reading. There is a story about a photo, but the photo is no longer there. Or maybe it is still in the message, and you are not sure whether downloading the email will save the picture too.
When you save missionary emails, it helps to keep the original messages, the actual photo files, and a separate backup. This takes a little checking, but it is much easier to do while you still know where everything is.
Put the Emails in One Place
Start by searching for the missionary's sending address. Put the updates in a dedicated folder or label, then check the dates. If they changed email addresses during the mission, search for both.
In Gmail, a label is a way to group emails without having to move them into a separate account. Give it a name you will recognize later, such as the missionary's name and mission years.
Look through the beginning and end of the collection. Then check a few months in between. You may find that you have replies mixed in with the original updates or that another family member has some letters you are missing.
Use messages you have permission to access and keep. Private conversations may need to stay separate from the updates intended for the whole family.
Download the Original Messages
Screenshots are handy for showing someone a sentence. They are less useful when you want to preserve a whole mission's worth of letters and photos.
Your email provider may let you download individual messages as EML files or a group of messages as an MBOX file. Those are email file formats that can keep the message information together. You do not need to read the raw files yourself to use a supported import tool.
For Gmail, follow our step-by-step email export guide. It shows how to select your label in Google Takeout, download the export, and upload it to Letters Home. Google also has instructions for downloading your data. Some managed accounts may limit what you can export.
Keep an unchanged copy of whatever you download. If you need to extract or rearrange files, work from another copy.
Check the Pictures
This is the part that is easy to miss. A photo you can see inside an email might be an attached file, an embedded image, or a picture loading from another website.
Those do not all behave the same way when you save the message.
Open a few saved emails and compare them with the originals. Choose an early letter, a recent one, and a week with several pictures. Check that the images actually came with the text.
If something is missing, look for the original attachment or ask the person who owns the photo for a copy. A shared album link can help you find the pictures, but saving the link does not save the pictures themselves.
Use original image files when you can. A small copy is still worth keeping if it is all you have; you can decide later how large it should appear in the book.
Leave Yourself a Few Notes
You do not need an elaborate folder system. You do need names that will make sense later.
A photo folder called 2026-09-07-first-week tells you more than new-photos-final. Add a short note if you know a week is missing or a date is uncertain. You will save yourself some guessing when you come back to make the book.
Keep another copy of the archive in a separate location you control. Open a few files occasionally, especially after changing computers or moving the backup.
Bring the Emails Into Letters Home
Letters Home accepts supported EML, MBOX, and ZIP email uploads. Check the upload screen for the current file and size limits, then review the letters and photos once the import finishes.
If the mission is still going, you can also set up ongoing email collection for new updates. Saved-email uploads and ongoing collection are different options, so choose the one that fits what you are trying to do.
Once everything is together, you have a good starting point for making a mission book. Hooray! Keep those original downloads even after the book is finished.