Zoli's Blog - Latest Comments in Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

CB — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:06:23 -0000

@emlwinmail
I discovered this great post this morning (thankyou Zoli!) and successfully transferred gigabytes of archived .eml files in my Windows Mail local folders over to my gmail account. The first couple of drag'n'drops I had to do in small chunks otherwise the connection dropped, but then for some reason it stabilized and I just dumped the rest (90%) in one go.
I enabled IMAP for my gmail account online in gmail settings, then created an account in Windows Mail for my gmail address as per Zoli's instructions. Once you do this, it will ask if you want to synchronize folders, then all my gmail folders appeared in Outlook, one for each label in gmail. I had created a label online called 'transfer' to dump the .eml files into.
Since all my .eml files are in my Windows Mail local folders, in Windows Mail I just dragged those emails across to my 'transfer' folder under 'imap.gmail.com' top folder in Windows Mail. Then the local and online folders synchronize.
Hope the layman's description is helpful. I was totally lost until I found Zoli's post.

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

emlwinmail — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 12:09:49 -0000

sounds great & i set uo the imap accont in my winmai & enabled it on google, but Im lost after that.

It wont drag & drop or copy (except to an exsisting locak folder)

What an I missing. Im really upset, after month sof converting my outlook to wimal eml, I just cant lose them in windows 7

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

rd — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:36:22 -0000

I have read you can only cut and paste 200 at a time is that correct?

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Mike C — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:33:13 -0000

How about the other way around? Anyone know how to back up mail from Gmail or Google Apps Gmail to something local? I think a lot of us will be very very sad if something were to happen to all that mail we rely Google to keep safe....

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Ryan Meray — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:59:58 -0000

I've been using this technique or a variation thereof for some time now to move clients off of OE, Outlook, Thunderbird, whatever, and over to the Gmail side. I did this for my own account a while back and now all 1.5GB+ of my email is accessible from any computer with 'net access.

I am pretty sure I only found out about this method from your site, so I gotta say thanks for the tip!

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Ben — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:59:35 -0000

I'd like to move my enormous Eudora Inbox over to Gmail, but I have a lot of spam in there that I didn't catch when it came in originally. Is there anyway to import to Gmail in a way that it will run its spam filters through it?

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

John — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:37:26 -0000

Great post, I guess it just goes to show that good info lasts a lot longer than the person who originally posted (I'm still pleased to see google groups archives of C programming questions & answers from the 90's).

I have successfully moved from Yahoo to Gmail using this post (beware that you NEED to choose Email Account -> IMAP, in Thunderbird 2.0 -> portableapps.com of course!, to be able to interactively work with your GMAIL account, POP is on by default!)

Also, give a quick read through of Google's recommended settings for Thunderbird.

Pre-creating the label groups in Gmail will make dragging and dropping into the label/folder easier (in Thunderbird it looks like a folder, go figure :)

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

zolierdos (Zoli Erdos) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:47:35 -0000

@i001962 imap. http://tinyurl.com/2er3cf

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Herb — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:39:51 -0000

It would be great when gmail allows us to export all our emails somehow.

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Greg — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:09:33 -0000

Absolutely brilliant solution. I was really worried about copying PST files as they're so big, and corruptible. So this solves it very elegantly.

If I'd known about this before I'd have put a gmail folder on my Outlook ages ago. Much better than archiving it. It's taking ages to transfer my old emails, but it'll be worth it.
BTW - I find it easier to move rather than copy, as I've found that if the transfer fails for any reason, it's easier to just transfer what's left. If I copy mails, it's a pain to work out what's gone and what's not. That's assuming nothing gets lost, but I'm willing to risk it and it seems very stable so far.

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Ed Boyd — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:58:45 -0000

Why transfer email from Outlook to GMail...easy answer!
Ever since Outlook went to Vista, it has been, at best, a pain in the butt! When one looks back on their experiences with this albatross, all you see is one glitch after another. Sometimes, all by itself, it starts acting up. As of this writing, I have developed duplicates of everything...how no clue. I have deided to move to web based email. Web based email for my busines? Yes. Yahoo is now unlimited storage, calendar, contacts and notes. If I want ot store info, externally, I use One Note...just hit the print button in Yahoo and it prints to One Note! If I want more in the PIM functions, I can buy Essential PIM for free or chose to pay for a few more bells and whistles. Yahoo lacks importing email from Outlook and I have a lot of reference emails. So I can load my emails into GMail and once in GMail, I can suck it into Yahoo. I also can leave that email in GMail as an Archive. That's why one wants to suck email into GMail...dump Outlook, save disk space, memory and grief. "And now you know the rest of the story!"

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Lars Petersen — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:11:02 -0000

Nice! I was searching for a simple method like this, now I finally have it! Thanks a bunch!

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Phil Beresford — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:03:41 -0000

Fantastic! Excellent solution, worked perfectly using Entourage on a Mac.

Thank you thank you thank you :)

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Mark McRobie — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:34:46 -0000

Will this work with a load of .eml files I exported from Windows Mail in Vista?

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

kenny — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:36:17 -0000

I'm probably slightly more knowledgeable than your average layperson and can usually troubleshoot through the basics, but I find myself really confused at the moment. I've read through this current post and all the comments as well as the previous (apparently obsolete) versions, but I'm just not sure where to start.

I'm trying desperately to leave AOL firmly in my past. I've used gmail's fetch to get my inbox. OK there. I want to get my archived folders, sent mail, and old (read) mail over to gmail to correspond with gmail labels.

note: I don't have the AOL client installed. I do everything on the web.

Can someone please direct me from here to get me on track with the instructions in this post?

1. Should I use Thunderbird? If so, how can I be sure that date-stamped info will be preserved?

2. What are these .pst files and do I have them?

3. Can I leave everything I fetch on the aol server as well as a backup? (incidentally, all of my fetched inbox mail was deleted from aol. I'm still hoping to find out how to stop that).

Many thanks

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Daniel Williams — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:04:27 -0000

No, it's not the archive PST file that is the problem. It's only 1 GB. The file that is complained about is the file ITRimap.gmail.com-0000001.pst, which is in fact, 761 KB. Which makes no sense. How could that file be at any size limit?
Now when I right-click on the imap account (imap.gmail.com), I see that the folder size is just about 400 KB there. But the "format" of the file is "Personal Folders File (97-2002)" It seems that this should be in a more recent format.
But if the local file is so small, then this message must be due to something else. Could it be that imap will tell Outlook the size of my GMail account? And Outlook then decides that that is too big? That would be odd, but it's all I can think of right now. More ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Zoli Erdos — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:21:28 -0000

Daniel, I only vaguely remember this from the time I used Outlook, but it does not free up space in the .pst file when you delete accounts / folders.

You explicitely had to select "compress file" don't remember the menu path, but getting there involved displaying your data file, right click ...etc ..etc. The compress process can take forever, but in the end you end up with a small file.

Another option is to creat a new data file and just drag the relevant folders from the old file into the new one.

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Daniel Williams — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:03:26 -0000

I am using Outlook 2003, and have connected to my GMail account using IMAP. The drag and drop worked very well for a few days as I copied over my 4+Gb of data. But then it stopped working, and I get a message:
"Can't move items. The file \gmail.pst has reached its maximum size."

Now this folder did get to be about 1.7GB, but then I removed my GMail account, and re-added it showing only certain folders/labels. The pst file is just a few Kb now. Yet I keep getting this message.

Any ideas? I have all my mail prior to 2007 archived in GMail now, and would like to get the 2007 email there as well.

Cheers,
Daniel Williams

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

andy n — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:28:47 -0000

This is an awesome way of archiving emails but has anyone tried to drag a folder with subfolders from Outlook into gMail IMAP? I just tried with a 300mb chunk of my mailbox and for some reason it only transfered about 200mb. The worst part is that it didn't truncate in any logical order.

Anyone have the same issue. I don't mind spending the time doing smaller chunks. I just want to make sure that it's reliable and actually transfering all of the emails! Any ideas on why it might be flakey?

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Mike C — Sun, 18 May 2008 21:36:46 -0000

Seeing as this was written in Oct 2007 and it's now May 2008, is it at all possible to transfer local mail to Google Apps Gmail via FTP?

Or has dragging and dropping via IMAP been improved to the point where all email gets transferred?

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Pasquale — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:45:43 -0000

Someone in Chaina loged into my Yahoo account, sent over 1000 junk e-mails selling cell phones, etc. to everybody in my address book and then erased it... Niiice, fery friendly new way of doin' business with China... THEIR waay - just like what they did to Tibet... ;) :(

NOw I HAVE to trasfer to Gmail...

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Pasquale — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:41:45 -0000

Thanks Zoli,
so I was't just doing something wrong or weird...

Well, then, IS there a WAY to trasfer all my 7000 sent e-mail from Yahoo+???

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Zoli Erdos — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:38:14 -0000

Pasquale, it's not supposed to. Gmail Fetcher picks up your inbound mail only, like any other POP service.

IMAP syncs your SENT mail, too.

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Pasquale — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:29:53 -0000

So, how come Gmail fetcher did not move my Sent folder from Yahoo+ account, while it moved everything else OK?
It's annoying to look for an answer, but perhaps someone here know the trick ;)

Cheers~

Re: Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

tpullano — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:01:31 -0000

For Wayne above and others moving from Yahoo (free or paid) to Gmail, I was able to import all my yahoo mail in gmail with dates, header info, etc. all in tack.

Did this using Gmail IMAP, Thunderbird, and YPOPs (google it!). This will import all your folders (I did it one at a time, configuring YPOPs each time for each folder).

Within TB, I created an account for my Yahoo pop download, and the IMAP for Gmail per Zoli's second bullet. IMAP created the full label structure from my gmail in TB (now I have a gmail backup too!). Downloaded each folder to TB from Yahoo using YPOPs, then moved the emails to the appropriate gmail label (folder) in TB, then synced it up to gmail. If a label didn't existing, I created in TB and it would replicate in gmail!

Email me at the name above "at gmail dot com" for specifics if you'd like.