A mission account is deleted 60 days after they come home, and everything in it goes too — every email, every photo. Put in the date they come home and we’ll tell you exactly how long you have, and what to do about it. Free, no account needed.
How long you actually have
Every missionary is given a mission Google account with about 30GB of storage. Their weekly emails home, the photos they take, anything in Drive — it all lives there. The account belongs to the mission, not to your family.
It closes 60 days after release. That changed: it used to be 90 days, the notice to departing missionaries was updated in December 2025, and the 60-day rule became universal on 8 March 2026. Anyone released before 1 January 2026 was on the old 90-day clock — if that is your family, 90 is your number, not 60.
After it closes, an account can often still be reached for a while — up to about 90 days after release — by signing in at mail.missionary.org in a browser and choosing Extend Access. Most families never find this because they try the Gmail app, where the option does not appear.
Source: this is what a Church employee posted in the official tech forum at tech.churchofjesuschrist.org on 15 December 2025. We are not the Church and this page is not official — check with your mission office if anything here does not match what you have been told.
Why 60 days is shorter than it sounds
The window is the two months right after homecoming — the release, the reunion, the talk, a semester starting, a job. Families rarely lose the memories because they didn’t care. They lose them because sixty days sounds like plenty right up until it isn’t.
If your missionary is still serving, this is a solved problem: keep the emails as they arrive and there is nothing to rescue at the end. If they are already home, do the Takeout export this week.