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Luke Quinane
Asked: 2009-05-23 03:39:25 +0800 CST

GMail/Google Apps to GMail migration

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I've currently got my email and calendar hosted on Google Apps. However I really like some of the features that have gone into GMail (themes, etc) and would like to move my mail and calendar to GMail. Ultimately, I'd like to:

  • Retain dates
  • Retain labels
  • Migrate my calendar entries

What options are there? I know that I can move emails between two IMAP accounts but what about calendar entries? And how do you retain labels?

Limitnone's gXFER seemed like an option but it no longer seems to be available/working.

Also, does anyone backup their Google Apps data?

migration gmail g-suite

4 Answers

  1. Themes, Labs, and other cool stuff are enabled in the lastest version of Google Apps, I can't see any differences between my Gmail and Google Apps accounts.

    If I'm not mistaken, these new features are only available if you set the control panel to "Next Generation" in the Domain options, and use the English language.

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  2. imapsync is the best IMAP transfer tool I've used (offlineimap sucked, and for the expected reasons: wrong tool for the job; and uw-mailutil seems to have mangled some data along the way).

    You'll have to play with the options a little to get it moved over, but it should do the trick.

    Alternatively: Thunderbird drag-and-drop.

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  3. One way to transfer your calendar entries if you don't mind keeping your google apps account open is to share your google apps calendar with your gmail calendar so the entries will show up. This is the strategy google reccomends.

    You should also be able to use the Ical files provided by google to download all your data in the current calendar and upload it into another see here for download instructions and here for upload instructions.

    A larger amount of the Gmail features are avaliable but navigating to "Manage this domain" then selecting "Domain Settings" and ticking the boxes which say: Automatically add new services when they become available and Enable pre-release features. See:

    alt text

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  4. Best Answer

    Contacts

    To move the contact I used the Import/Export links in the contacts window. Even though I selected "Google's CSV format" it lost the group information. You could get around this by exporting each group individually.

    Filters

    In GMail labs there is a "Filter import/export" tool by "Luke B, Slava C and the Data Liberation team". This worked brilliantly.

    Mail

    To copy the mail over I took these steps:

    • Add both accounts to Outlook
    • Made a folder in the destination account for each label
    • Copy all the mail from the source label to the destination label
    • Copy all mail under "Google Mail/All Mail" from the source to the destination.

    Google's IMAP provider was smart enough not to duplicate the messages.

    Calendar

    I haven't migrated my calendar yet, however Jona's solution looks like the best option for that.

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