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I currently have a mail account at some provider (Gandi.net). I want to "migrate" my account to a Gmail account. I created a new gmail account. I want to copy all my emails from my previous imap server to Gmail. I can download my Inbox via gmail "Check mail from other accounts:" option via POP. But this does not download the "Sent" folder. I tried :

  • to have both accounts (old imap account & new gmail) configured in Thunderbird, and copy paste my sent mails into gmail. It copies a dozen emails before getting some kind of request timeout from gmail, ending the copy/paste.
  • to save all my sent emails to eml files and then adding them in the gmail sent folder in Thunderbird. This kind of works (still gets timeouts, but Thunderbird resume the sync after) but all the email dates are reset to today in gmail making a complete mess.

Note that my old email provider is not supported by Gmailify.

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    In fairness, it was many years ago now but I used the "Thunderbird with two IMAP accounts" approach. The timeout problem was caused by the amount of data transferred rather than the number of emails - so I sorted them by size, deleted any excessively large ones (that I really didn't need) and migrated them across in batches of about 100 starting from small to large.
    – Richard
    Commented Oct 25, 2023 at 12:59

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Depending on your service provider, to import SENT messages using Gmail's POP import tool the source messages need to be in the INBOX at the old provider.

This is because Gmail's POP access is to the INBOX only. This assumes that the source account stores the messages in a traditional format (MBOX, etc.) rather than labeling like Gmail.

On Gmail's end the distinction between a message in Sent, and one that is not, is quite simply the FROM Address. In other words, if Gmail recognizes a FROM address as belonging to you (including aliases and "Send As" accounts), it will show up in SENT. It doesn't matter if it actually was sent by Gmail. You can't add or remove messages from SENT.

When migrating large numbers of messages from one account to another I would typically batch them by source folder and then, on Gmail's end, apply different labels for each batch using the POP import tool.

Example:

  1. Copy the messages from a source folder into the source account's INBOX
  2. Import the messages to Gmail using POP, removing the original (it was a copy) and applying a label matching the original folder. The original message is removed so that I know all the messages successfully transferred.
  3. Copy another folder to the source INBOX and repeat the import with a different label.

Most of my migrations have benifited from having FTP access to the source account (cPanel) to move messages around, and this aporoach has been reliable.

I believe POP import to Gmail will do about 200 per sync so larger folders need multiple syncs to transfer.

The devil's in the details and there are many tools available. But, if you can move messages around without modifying them, it is IMO preferable.

Notes

  • The POP import tool preserves the original message and headers which is why I like it.
  • It may or may not be obvious, but the messages' read status would not be carried over.
    • You can address this globally by searching using the label(s) you apply during import and then batch update the status of all the messages to "read".
    • Presumably for a mailbox migration this would be of little concern, however, if you want to maintain the actual read status (rather than globally setting all to read), you can batch import read and unread messages separately so that a custom label can be applied and the correct read status reapplied following import.
  • When importing via POP, Gmail will apply SPAM filters.
    • You may be able to create a rule to override this,
    • or, by searching the SPAM using the label(s) you apply during imports, and removing the SPAM label,
    • or, if your SPAM box is emptied prior to importing you may simply be able to visually see the new messages in the SPAM folder and remove the label.
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    It's been a while since I used Google's POP import tool but I found a number of issues: the read status wasn't transferred over, spam filtering was applied (so a load of items ended in Junk) and some emails were just silently dropped. If you go down this route, make sure you verify the numbers afterwards.
    – Richard
    Commented Oct 25, 2023 at 14:03
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    @Richard Your two points are now included in the answer. Any migration approach has the potential to fail in any number of ways. I would be interested to better understand more about the messages that were "silently dropped" and why but, being careful and verifying things is always good advice regardless of the migration approach taken.
    – Blindspots
    Commented Oct 25, 2023 at 14:58
  • Hello ! I applied Richard Solution, it worked. Was a bit of work, but found out you can go with even bigger batches at least with the light emails (did +- 300 at a time). transferring +- 1600 emails was relatively quick. I'll mark you answer as accepted since it's very helpful and would probably work too.
    – djib
    Commented Oct 26, 2023 at 7:37
  • Forgot to say that i could transfer all my emails, i did not get rid of the biggest.
    – djib
    Commented Oct 26, 2023 at 7:55

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