Moving emails to gmail
Good evening,
After several years on an Outlook-based email system, my company recently began migrating to a gmail-based email system. I'm trying to get a jump on things and I want to move all my saved Outlook emails to my gmail account. (On the Outlook system, emails were automatically deleted from the inbox after 30 days so I had to create a pst file.)
I've been working all day on a method to move my emails...my company's archaic and over-zealous email security settings haven't been helping things....and finally figured out that I could save my PST data file convert it to mbox files, open those files in Thunderbird, setup my gmail account through Thunderbird, and copy the emails over....great!
Except....I can't get it to copy more than a few emails at a time....and it hates to copy any email that has an attachment. Some of my saved email folders have 500+ emails in them. Are there any settings I can change it get it to just copy the whole folder of emails (and to not skip over the emails with attachments)? Or should I prepare myself for a long weekend of copying?
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer this rookie!
All Replies (3)
So you have an mbox file - thats good. mbox files are a type of text file with emails written one after the other in that file. mbox files do not have any extension.
But it does not sound like you are importing the mbox file, it sounds like you are trying to import individual emails.
Download this addon tool and save the .xpi file to eg: desktop ImportExporttools 0 download link at bottom of page
On the Menu toolbar: Tools > Addons OR Menu icon (3 bar icon) > Addons
The Add-ons Manager tab opens. click on gear wheel icon and select 'Install addon from file' locate the addon .xpi file you downloaded and click on Open When it is installed it will appear in the list. You will need to restart Thunderbird.
Then either right on a folder or mail account name and select: ImportExporttools > Import mbox file Select: Import diretly one or more mbox files. click on OK
Locate the mbox file and click on Open It should import the entire mbox file.
Hi Toad-Hall,
Thanks for the reply! I have already taken that step. Now I am trying to move the individual emails from those mbox files from Thunderbird to gmail. Any suggestions?
In Thunderbird Assuming you have already created the imap gmail mail account and synchronised the subscribed gmail folders.
select the folder containing the email highlight a couple of emails
right click on highlighted emails and select 'Copy to' gmail account folder. or use drag and drop to move them into an imap mail account folder.
Then check the gmail webmail account using a browser to see if they migrated correctly.
If you find the headers have changed and this is not desirable, I would leave those emails in Local Folders. you still have access to them via Thunderbird.