restore-group: "400: Unable to parse the raw message - invalid"

[Jerther]

Full steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Use google takeout to export emails from a google workspace user
2. Download the takeout archive, and extract it localluy
3. Create a google Groups to receive the emails
4. Install gyb for windows and when prompted for a user, use a super admin
5. gyb --email [email protected] --action restore-group --local-folder c:\takeout --use-admin

Expected outcome (what are you trying to do?):
All emails are imported, except those that are too big

Actual outcome (what errors or bad behavior do you see instead?):
A LOT of "400: Unable to parse the raw message - invalid"

Additional info:
There's not much help on this on the net.... All I found was this SO article but that doesn't help a mere user ;)

[Jerther]

I also found this thread on your google group. The user reports having problems with Hangouts (Chat) messages, and that could be the problem here also.

[jay0lee]

The Google APIs generally don't support backup/restore of Google Chat messages and those messages are excluded from the initial backup by default. If you are using a custom --search rule on the backup you should add -is:chat to exclude Chat messages from your backup also.

If the error is happening on something other than a chat message then I'll need to see specific examples of failing messages in order to repro the issue.

[Jerther]

Hmm, not sure I follow you on the initial backup. I used Google Takeout with the default settings. Here, chats appear to be selected by default, unless that means nothing when the top checkbock is checked:

("Clavardage" means "Chat" in french)

[jay0lee]

Yes, you'd want to exclude Chat from the Takeout. They can't be migrated back into Gmail or Groups in any meaningful form.

[Jerther]

I understand thanks.

Would it be possible for GYB to detect such chat messages and skip them with a proper warning? The message it outputs right now is a bit worrisome and confusing...

Also the documentation does not say much about Chat messages, except in the "--action count" section.