How to upload all your old archived Email to Gmail from outlook, lotus notes, and Unix (pine)

November 9, 2007 by Ben Shoemate 

one-client2 This post gets a lot of attention, so I rewrote part of it. It will give you step-by-step instructions to take all your old email (in my case over 10 years worth) and upload it into Gmail. Over the years I have used several different email clients: Pine on Unix, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail. I am currently pretty comfortable with Gmail and have been using it since it was released. Like many people I am a data pack-rat and have kept all my email files (well, almost all – sadly I discovered a 6 months gap). My vision is to put it all into Gmail so I can leverage the great search and tagging features they provide. So here are the steps.

Overall Strategy – get everything converted and loaded into a local server, then sync it to Google.

Why do it this way? There are many advantages. First, if your just moving 100 to a 1000 messages with no attachments, then you can just skip all this and use the IMAP interface found in Google’s FAQ. That method allows you to “see” you gmail account in outlook (or thunderbird or lotus notes) and then just drag or copy messages from one box to the other.  But if your moving more than 1000 messages (or in my case 20,000 messages) with lots of attachments, that will take you days, and you have to sit there are watch it because you can only move about 200 messages at a time. In this method, we consolidate first to a local email server (I’ll show you how to set it up below) running on pc, then let the two accounts (your local one and gmail) sync on their own. Any other way and you are stuck sitting there, dragging and dropping or copying and pasting 200 messages at a time from one folder to another. Second – this keeps all dates in tact. It is really nice to see message you send in 1995 in your Gmail account. Third, once we do this, we can use it as a local backup of our Gmail – just incase the unthinkable happens to Gmail. (I said don’t think of it!)

Ready? Let’s get started

Here is the over all process – you will notice that I installed a email server on my computer called Mercury. This allows us to set up a IMAP and POP account locally that is much faster and will serve as a local backup of all email. 

overall-process

Step 1) First find all your email

I dug through all my old hard drives and consolidate my mail into one location. As you can see, I have outlook (pst) files, lotus notes (nsf) files and files from an old Unix (pine) account I had at school. The zip file (all 2.7GB of it) is the finished product – all my email from 1995 though 2005 (2006 and 2007 are in gmail already).

 
If you are looking at my files, you see a lot of overlap, that’s ok, better safe than sorry…we can delete the duplicates once they are in Thunderbird using an extension.

Step 2. Download the Software

Why Thunderbird – because it is open source with a large developer base. This means there is a good set of tutorials for writing extensions if I to want later on (for those visualizations). Also, I’m making a long term bet that 50 years from now, there will still be tools that import these files – (since they are just text files with no encoding and no database) – plus Thunderbird is really fast and can read 6gb of email quickly (lotus notes and outlook tend to slow down). So Thunderbird will be the final destination on my computer and I will upload from there.

Step 3. Install the software

  • Thunderbird – just default everything
  • Mercury – Make sure you set it up for both POP and IMAP when you get those options in the wizard
  • Lotus Notes – Default
  • Outlook – Default

Step 4. Import Unix files to Thunderbird

These are the easiest because Thunderbird will read these natively. All you have to do is copy the files in to the local folder and reopen Thunderbird.
A) Find out where thunderbird is storing your local files. To do this go to Tools > Account Settings. (note I renamed the local account to Ben Shoemate (all mail) but what your interested in is the "Local Directory" copy that and go there in windows explorer. This is where you need to copy the Unix files (they are files with no extensions). Just copy them to this "local folder", close and restart Thunderbird. Your old mail will be there! That’s it!

Step 5. Set up a local Email account in Mercury.

Open Mercury – if it is all ready running you will see down in the windows toolbar by the clock.

Otherwise , Start > Program Files > etc..

Once Mercury is open, go to Configuration > Manage Local Users > Add User
Because there is so much mail, I am going to set up a different local account per year. Gmail.com can import from 5 accounts at a time, and this will save a lot of time later on. So just make up an account name – I use my initials and the year and a simple password.

It should look like this when your done.

Each of these accounts are real email addresses. When you are local (in lotus notes and outlook) you can map to them with bs1999@localhost
In gmail, you can add them as bs1999@youripaddress (i.e. bs1999@111.111.122.11).


Step 6. Lotus Notes NSF files to your local email with IMAP

Once lotus notes is installed, you can simply double click the nsf files to open them, or you can click File > Database > Open > browse

You should see your old mail now. Ahh the memories….But don’t stop to read everything again or I’ll never finish this tutorial! Now, in lotus notes we are going to map to the local email account you set up in mercury. (Note: Gmail now has IMAP so you could just map directly to gmail if you want using the same procedure – but again, it will take a 100 years if you have this much email).

Go to File > Preferences > Client Reconfiguration Wizard

Check Pop or IMAP and click next.

Select IMAP, enter your new email account you set up in mercury, and type localhost, click next.

enter your account name again, and enter the password you gave yourself.
Click next, enter localhost as the server and your email address again – this doesn’t matter since you will not be using this email address for very long and it won’t show up on any of the mail that goes through it.
next, next, next your done.

To open the view of this in notes, click the "Databases" icon on the left panel and open your new account (this might take 2-3 minutes while notes creates a new nsf file etc.)

Now you should have you local account open. Now simply open the old nsf file, go to the "all documents" folder, select all, copy (I think it will only let you copy 2500 at a time) and then switch to you new email account and paste. Once you have all the messages for that year in the local IMAP account, close the nsf and repeat for all nsf files, and all years.

Step 7 – Outlook to your local email with IMAP


The same as in lotus notes – open your pst, then add the imap account and copy and paste.

  • To open the pst go to File > Manage Data files and click Add.
  • To open the local IMAP account go to Tools > Account Settings > New email account

Check the box that says "Manually configure server settings".

  • Select Internet Mail
  • Enter your Name, Email address (bs1999@localhost) and password, select IMAP, the server is localhost for both incoming and outgoing


Once you have mapped to this account, simply copy your old mail from the PST to the new account.

Step 8 – Clean it up in Thunderbird

Connect Thunderbird to you local email server (mercury) and download all your mail. Just like in outlook and lotus notes, we are going to add an account to Thunderbird and let it download all the mail you just put into it from lotus notes, pine and outlook.

  • Open Thunderbird
  • Click Tools > Account Settings > Add Account
  • Enter Account Name (for me its bs1999@localhost), Name, email address (bs1999@localhost)

  • Click Server settings

  • Click OK.
  • The next thing I did was organize copy them down into my local Thunderbird account and used an extension to delete duplicates
  • Then I spent some time looking for gaps…oh well

Step 9 – Upload to gmail


By now your local account has a lot of mail. Let’s start pulling it into gmail. I set up a new gmail account to test it first. From there I can pull it into my main account.

  • Log in to gmail
  • Click Settings > Accounts > Get Mail from other accounts (Pop3) > Add other accounts
  • Add your accounts from your local account. Note: you need you IP address. If you have a router you will need to route ports for pop3 (port 110) to your local computer. Log into your router to do this. While your there, get the IP of your router (ITS NOT the one that starts with 192. or 10. those are always local addresses)


(that’s NOT my IP address btw)

Next – gmail gives you some great options to tag the mail as it comes in, do it. Even if your not a tagger – do it.

You might also want to leave the message on the server (your computer) if this is a trial run.
Click Add account. If you get a problem, make sure your firewall is open, you port is mapped, and your password is right.

Next I’ll show you how to upload all those old chats…

If you liked this post, check out my other greatest hits:

Filed under: All Blog Posts, Email, Google, Guides, Social Networks, Web Design, Web Software
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Comments

  • Name
    How do I import pst and pab files to gmail?
    Ho wdo I read true IP address?
  • go to http://www.whatismyip.com/ to get your real ip
  • Hi everybody

    I thought I should post the results of my experiments in the hope that it might assist others.

    First of all Gmail, since Ben's original post there's an additional way to set up the POP fetching. Under "Accounts and import" there is now also a button called "Import mail and contacts". This one appears to do the same thing as the "Add POP3 email account".

    At one point when the accounts I had set up using the "Add POP3 email account" kept failing I had more luck with the "Import mail and contacts" method. There appears to be no difference between them judging by their settings but for some reason the import method worked for me.

    As for how I did it after numerous failed attempts (set out above in the comments) here's what I did.

    I simply started over. First I deleted all IMAP accounts in Thunderbird, leaving only my Local Folders of downloaded emails. Then I deleted the users in Mercury and the accounts I had set up in Gmail. I did not, however, uninstall and reinstall.

    When I created the accounts again in Thunderbird, I changed the account names to ensure - paranoically - that there was no "corruption" left somewhere in the system which would jinx the new setup. Likely an overkill but oh well.

    I made the Thunderbird accounts as simple as possible. The year was the name of each account, a simple password. I was a bit paranoid in that I, in step three of Thunderbird's account setup, which defaults to POP3, unticked the checkbox about using a global inbox, before selecting the IMAP radio button. It likely had no effect at all.

    One thing that needs to be understood is that the messages can only be pulled from an IMAP inbox. This means that you need to ensure that all your messages are in an inbox in Thunderbird. I say "an" inbox because obviously you can create several accounts to make use of Gmail's 5-account multi-tasking. As long as messages are in the inboxes of the accounts they will (or should) be pulled from the account.

    I expected Gmail to group the messages - at least to the best of its abilities - in conversations after upload. For this reason I copied _all_ messages of a relevant year _regardless_ of which folder within Thunderbird's Local Folders (Sent, my various personal folders etc) they were originally in.

    After having added all accounts in Thunderbirds I added the corresponding users in Mercury. Then I clicked each (still empty) IMAP mailbox in Thunderbird which brought up the login prompt for Mercury. I logged in and saved each password. I wanted to be sure that the client-server connection worked before starting to copy all the messages from the Local Folders account to the IMAP accounts' inboxes. In some cases the connection didn't work but that was because I had typed too fast and made mistakes when typing the passwords into Mercury's user creation panel or in Thunderbird's accounts panel.

    Only after I had ensure that the connection was OK did I copy the messages into the IMAP folders. That took a while on my slow old PC.

    After having created the accounts in Gmail the upload started. I really did not do anything different from what Ben described but suddenly - after having recreated everything - it worked. One thing to note - my PC is slow and as a result I often had to type in the POP password for each account two or three times because Mercury would time out.

    The intervals at which Gmail checks the POP accounts are random. Sometimes it's every few minutes and sometimes there's half an hour between the pulls. There is sometimes a "Check now" button next to eah POP account, but not always. Gmail also limits each pull to 198-200 messages.

    But after 24 hours of uploading all my messages were in Gmail.

    A note on tagging. For each POP account I made in Gmail I created a year tag. When everything was working, however, I added an "upload" tag which I assigned to all uploaded messages before removing the "year" tags.

    It turns out that Gmail groups messages pretty well. Not exactly sure if this is only based on the Subject but in any event most of my messages ended up as conversations. Nice.

    There is one thing to remember regarding Gmail's conversation view: the number of messages that you'll eventually see will not match the number of messages you've had in Thunderbird/uploaded. It's pretty obvious but easily forgotten.

    Unfortunately Gmail offers no way (that I know of) of counting individual emails so there's no simple way of verifying within Gmail that everything's been uploaded.

    Those were my observations. Hope it helps some.
    /p
  • beckymalaria
    Hi Ben,
    Wow, the continuing popularity of this post after over 2 years points to the ongoing and largely unsolved problem of migrating email!

    I've been running into trouble trying to upload several years of Outlook messages into Gmail. I've tried the drag-and-drop method within Outlook (from my local to Gmail IMAP) and am getting the date problems as well as others. So I'm trying to get this to work.

    I'm trying to follow the Shoemate Method, but have been encountering the same error message as arthurpjohnson. Outlook doesn't connect to my localhost account.

    I suspect that my installation/setup of Mercury was incorrect. I wasn't sure what options to choose during the Wizard. For example, am I supposed to choose the MercuryC or MercuryS STMP server?
  • I think you want MercuryC - S is a server module version. If you are having
    trouble you can look at the mercury log (
    http://community.pmail.com/forums/thread/15913.... ). I recommend you turn
    off windows firewall also when trying to do this as that is probably your
    problem. that or you have the wrong setup in outlook. Outlook should treat
    it alike any other server.
  • beckymalaria
    Ben, thanks for your reply. I was trying it with C, no luck. I'll try the firewall thing. I'm in over my head with Mercury, I was hoping that by following the directions carefully I could get it to work without having to understand its inner workings. Everything seemed to work how you described, but when it came time to hook it up to Outlook, I received the error message.

    My only other thought is that maybe I don't have my correct IP address. I found the number on whatismyipaddress.com. That ought to tell you a lot about my tech level!
  • alex
    Hi Ben,
    Great instructions! I'm really glad that I found this. I want to upload my Notes emails from a local replica. So far, your solution works great and I am currently copying files to the new IMAP account. The only problem is that I have a lot of folders in my old Notes email account, which don't seem to copy automatically. In the new account I have to manually create all the folders that I have in the old account and only then I can paste. Do you know a way to automate this?
  • No, for big folders I imported separately and told gmail to apply labels on
    import - the name of the folder become the label. But small ones from long
    ago I just combined locally and imported it wasn't worth it. The important
    thing to me was that they are searchable. Once they are in gmail, I use the
    filters to search for keywords like project names and company name and apply
    label to them.
  • Isaac Lew
    Excellent post! I just wanted to say that I used this method to import 10 years worth of mail that was saved in Outlook Express. The process was very similar, with me adding IMAP accounts (il1999 through il2009) in Outlook Express and then copying messages from my local inbox into each account inbox in Outlook Express. In other words, all my 1999 e-mails were copied into the il1999 account, all the 2000 e-mails into the il2000 account inbox, etc. This effectively was "adding" the messages to my local Mercury server from which Gmail could pull from.

    The only problem I ran into was that occassionaly, some of the messages wouldn't get fetched from my local server into Gmail. I knew which ones these were because I had unchecked "Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server" in the Gmail settings. As a result, all successfully imported e-mails would disappear from the inbox of that year's account. Messages that failed to import (for whatever reason) remained in Outlook Express, but they would be marked as unread. To get these failed messages to import, I marked them as unread (in Outlook Express) and manually told Gmail to fetch from the account again. Usually this would solve the problem and they would get pulled. If, however, they still weren't fetched, I moved the problematic e-mails from my local server to a temporary local folder I created in Outlook Express. Then I moved those e-mails BACK INTO the Mercury mail server (by moving them in Outlook Express). Again, I told Gmail to fetch from the account and this time they would always go through. I knew because they would then disappear as expected.

    I hope this helps somebody who wants to tranfer Outlook Express e-mails into Gmail.

    -Isaac
  • Isaac Lew
    I just noticed a typo: I meant to say that messages that failed to import (for whatever reason) remained in Outlook Express, but they would be marked as READ.

    -Isaac
  • rajshah
    Ben,

    Thanks very much for your wonderful and detailed tutorial. I'm about to use it to transfer about 6 years worth of emails currently in a .pst over to gmail. I have one major question before I proceed - all of my email is in a .pst (outlook 2007). I've used pop3 through gmail for all my mail for the last 3 years. Thus my .pst mails falls into two categories.
    1. Old email that is not on gmail
    2. Recent (<3 yrs) mail that is both in my .pst and still online on gmail.

    Two questions:
    1. If I follow your procedure, will I then have duplicate emails for the last 3 years?
    2. I have deleted many unneeded emails over the years in outlook. Will this process re-download all my previously deleted email from gmail (as they are still sitting in my gmail folder since I primarily use outlook-pop3 as my interface).

    The only solution that I can think of for these two issues is to completely delete all mail in gmail and then upload my .pst. I feel it's a risky thing if I make an error along the way.

    Any guidance or thoughts are much appreciated.

    Thanks again - I've been searching for an answer for a while and this is most informative page I've come across.

    Best,
    Raj
  • First, don't do this with your primary account - create another gmail
    account.
    Second - don't upload email you already have in gmail or you will have dups
    - make a copy of you pst (backup) then delete the last 3 years (starting
    with the first one in gmail).

    It won't download email from gmail unless you tell it to. Instead, you'll be
    asking gmail to download from you (as you will have a local server).
  • rajshah
    Thanks for the quick response.

    Will definitely try it on a new account before trying on my real one. (Though I eventually want this all on my primary gmail account).

    I should have added one point to my original post - the whole point in me doing this is to move to IMAP so I can access my email (through outlook) on multiple machines. Thus, won't IMAP automatically download all mail from gmail? (I run in offline mode, having a local copy of all mail makes it run faster and is a backup if, god forbid, google goes down).

    What is your thought on deleting everything in gmail and starting from scratch? (I have a local copy of all my gmail). The only issue I see is the volume of data - I'll be uploading about 5GB to gmail through your process and then both my desktop and laptop would each have to download 5GB through IMAP. Is that a problem?

    Interestingly, James Fallows recently wrote a blog about this problem: jamesfallows.theatlantic.com (He went with the IMAP drag and drop approach). The market seems ripe for someone to build an automated solution (and charge $50-100).

    Thanks again,
    Raj
  • Hi Ben

    Thanks for a very good guide. Perhaps you're no longer checking these comments but I thought I'd give it a try.

    I've followed the instrux carefully. In my case it was easier because my old emails are only in Thunderbird.

    I set up five accounts in Mercury 4.7 (latest version I believe) and then five "year" accounts in Thunderbird much like you did because my emails go back to 1999.

    I forwarded port 110 in my router.

    I copied the emails in Thunderbird according to the "year" rules.

    Then I set up five POP3 connections from my Gmail account.

    In Mercury's POP3 Server, I can see that Gmail is connecting regularly - but it _almost always_ results in 0 messages being uploaded. I have actually managed to upload 19 messages from my 2006-2007 account (which holds a few thousand emails) but I'm not able to discern why this was.

    I've tried the localhost vs 127.0.0.1 suggestion but that didn't make any difference.

    Mercury has so many different settings and also so many different, i believe they're called, modules. I've installed and ticked all of them under Configuration, except that I use MercuryC instead of MercuryE. I've tried both though but only MercuryC appears to work (in the sense that Gmail's connection attempts can be seen).

    Which of all these settings should be used?

    And should I have any particular settings under the Mercury Core Module, such as under "Internet name for this system", perhaps?

    In order to start the transfer, must I do anything in Thunderbird?
    Must Thunderbird run when Gmail is fetching (I suspect not since Mercury will keep copies in its server)?

    Thanks for any help you or anyone else may be able to give.
    Philip
  • One thing I noticed is you said it pulled "some" messages but not all.
    In Gmail - go to the Settings > "Forwarding and Pop/Imap" tab and make
    sure you have selected:
    - "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)"

    This is not the default. By default it only pulls messages from the
    time it was set up.
    Also remember, it is only going to pull messages from you inbox.

    If all else fails, test locally by setting up a new thunderbird
    account to point to your mercury. You should be able to connect
    locally and do everything the same as if your mercury server was on
    the web. If you can see all the messages on the mercury account
    through the local Thunderbird, then so should gmail if your firewall
    is set up correctly.

    Good luck, I know its frustrating - once you figure it out, come back
    and give an update to help others.
  • Thanks for responding Ben.

    I actually didn't realise emails will only be moved from the inbox. I've now moved all my emails in Thunderbird to the inbox of the account I'm trying to connect to. I decided not to use several accounts - it'll have to take the time it takes.

    I managed to connect for a little while and to some upload messages. But suddenly - for no reason whatsoever - it stopped. That is, I had not changed any setting at all. So now I'm stuck. I'm trying to recreate the situation that worked.

    Btw - it appears that Gmail's POP setting (Enable for all mail etc) does not do anything, at least not for me, because the emails i did manage to upload were way older than the date when the POP was activated.

    I get various errors:

    Sometimes Gmail responds that my POP server (the internet IP address) is not found. Sometimes it says that there's a problem with the password or username (there is no problem). Sometimes it says there was a timeout (i've set all timeout settings I can find in Mercury to plenty of seconds so this error is odd).

    I've tried making new local users in Mercury (and changing in Tbird too of course) but to no avail.

    The one thing I have noticed is that in the POP3 Server window there will be a connection attempt from Gmail but it says [Not logged in] and then Gmail's IP address. Previously when it worked, the [Not logged in] would flash for a second and then the username would come up (just like it does in the IMAP module when I connect Tbird). But since the whole thing stopped working, I only get the [Not logged in] message.
    - - - Any ideas on that and the rest of the above?

    Thanks a million
    P
  • Oh one more thing -- my main computer is a Mac. And because my PC is sooo oooold and sloooow I was thinking there might be a way to do set up a mail server on the Mac. I understand it is fairly easy to move over the Thunderbird files to the Mac.
    - - - Do you know if this can be done?

    Thanks again
    Philip
  • dd
    typo: "they are *now* in Local account"
  • dd
    type should be "they are *now* in Local account"
  • dd
    Hi,
    PLEAS HELP.

    I have set up a Mercury server (just installed it and created a DD username.

    I have imported Outlook Express messages into Thunderbird, they are not in Local account just like your "unix files" above.
    I also have set up a IMAP account in Thunderbird for DD@localhost.
    Everything is connected to GMail.

    BUT: there is no messages at local Mercury server!

    How do I transfer imported messages from Local to DD@localhost account in Thunderbird??? How do I make Mercury "accept" these messages from Thunderbird?

    PLEASE PLEASE HELP!
  • epitomegirl
    hey there! i'm trying to make this work, but i notice at the point where you start talking about mercury you mention windows, and i am on a mac using osx. is this not something i can do? thanks so much for your help! :)

    -carrie
  • I had some issues with my Windows Firewall getting in the way. I could telnet to port 110 from the command prompt on my machine using either localhost or the IP number, but could not connect from any other machine (even on the same network) until I stopped the Windows Firewall service.

    Once I could telnet from another machine I thought I was in the clear, but still cannot get Gmail to connect to my Mercury server via POP. It connects, but cannot login. A simple telnet test says "ct2005 is recognized here", but the PASS command never seems to acknowledge the password. Hence, Gmail is also unable to connect via POP3. Oddly, Thunderbird has no issue.
  • I think I got it figured out, although I'm not sure of the root cause.

    I created a new account in Mercury called "gmail" with no messages. I could connect via POP3 from Gmail to Mercury - no issues. I tried copying some files on the HDD from one account to another, but then I could no longer connect. I removed the copied files to make sure I could connect, then started moving files from one IMAP connection to another via Thunderbird. While I cannot connect from Gmail to my "ct2005" account on Mercury, I can copy the contents from "ct2005" to "gmail" in Thunderbird, then Gmail picks them out of the "gmail" account via POP3. Not perfect, but it seems to be working.
  • It sounds like maybe your messages were in the wrong format
    originally. Either way, glad you got it working and thanks for post
    your experience - it will help others.
  • Great article BTW. I'm tempted to go get my old PINE archives dating back to the early 90s and stick that in Gmail. If I go over the 7GB limit, I'll pay the $5 for the extra 20GB.

    Would you mind if I reference this article from the Gmail Podcast blog?
  • Please do :)

    I'm currently using 8GB of my 87.2GB (bought the $20 plan before
    Google upped the space to give 80GB for $20 a year)
  • Thanks this helped alot!
  • here is an issue....
    "A message in your account ______ was listed with an invalid size. It has been left on the server.


    Thanks,

    The Gmail Team"

    I see TONS of those things. and then when I look in the mail boxes it looks like there are emails without any information attached to them. Except for the time that google tried accessing them and "replied to" information on the left hand side. Like the deletion didn't work. I'm just worried that I'm loosing emails.
  • This rules. I've been trying to set up imap on my leased server and failed.
    Then my QNAP 639pro and failed.
    Finally since google controls my whole life, I decided to give into gmail since it will be auto-backed up, always available (phone/work/home/etc..), my disjointed accounts have me missing things (I get about 100-200 "critial emails" daily), and using thunderbird with sbpython KILLS my machine (except for my 3GHz quadcore).
    I just hope that they make gmail eventually work better with folders just like reader works.

    I have 16GB of emails going back to 1994 that I want to keep.
    This will work 100% for me I hope. Last night, I tried to drag and drop almost 10K pictures from my gf to gmail and it uploaded 97 and then went :(.
  • Some comments on how part of the above tutorial did not apply to my system.

    This occurred on Windows Vista x64 with SP2 using Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Mercury/32 version 4.7

    For awhile I could not get Outlook to connect to Mercury via IMAP. Watching the log, I could clearly see that no connection was ever made.

    I decided to check on what "localhost" is so I pinged it (Start > Run > "cmd", then "ping localhost" in the console). I saw the IP was in the 128-bit form as "::1". Since I suspected that maybe one of the programs only supports 32-bit IPs, I edited the Email Account info in Outlook, replacing every instance of "localhost" with "127.0.0.1". This worked flawlessly and I was able to proceed.

    I request that you update your guide to include mention of this possible scenario, since I'm certain that many other people are probably inflicted with this issue.
  • chriskeller1
    Dear Ben,

    Thanks a lot for this great tutorial. I tried to set it up with Parallels because I'm using a Macintosh and all my e-Mail since 1998 is stored in Microsoft Entourage. It is a big hassle to im- and export from Entourage to Thunderbird and still I get the Mercury not working.
    Two days ago Mac released its new OS called Leopard Server. Do you think I will be able to import my email with that new OS establishing a POP3-Server there?! Or is there any other useful method to import from Mac Entourage (POP3 offline database) to Gmail not losing dates? Please help me guys, thanks a lot!!!
  • You should be able to set up a pop server in parallels or find a way to set
    up a local server on a mac.
  • wyendor
    Ben -
    I'm having trouble getting Outlook to connect to the new Mercury server. I tested Mercury by sending an email (to myname@'my IP address' ) from my Gmail account, and it showed up fine in my Outlook Inbox. I also tried the reverse, sending a test email from Mercury (File>Send Mail Message) to gmail -- no luck in that direction.

    I set up Outlook exactly as above, using "myname@localhost" as the email address and "localhost" as the incoming&outgoing server. When I click "Test Account Settings" in the setup box, it says it can't log in to the server. The incoming IMAP port number is 143. The outgoing port number is 25. None of the settings in Mercury mentioned "localhost", though. Did I miss something?

    [Windows Vista SP1 / Outlook 2007 / Mercury v4.72 ]

    Thanks.
  • Open a cmd prompt and "ping localhost" to make sure localhost is valid
    reference for your computer. If not, try replacing localhost with you local
    ip address or 127.0.0.1. so:
    name_of_mailbox_you_set_up_in_mercury@127.0.0.1Also:
    - check the log files for errors.
    - You're outgoing address might need to match. So when you set up outlook,
    make sure you set you name and address to match the account you created.
    - SMTP is a separate service and you might have not turned it on in mercury
    so you can receive but not send. Make sure SMTP is enabled - if it is,
    you'll see a little window running and when you send a message you will see
    it in the log in that window in mercury.

    Good luck.
  • arthurpjohnson
    This sounds perfect, but I can't get Outlook 2003 to recognize my Mercury server. I get the following message from Outlook:


    Task 'Checking for new mail in subscribed folders on localhost.' reported error (0x800CCC0E) : 'Outlook is unable to download folder (null) from the IMAP e-mail server for account localhost. Error: Unable to connect to the server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).'

    Task 'localhost: Folder:Inbox Check for new mail.' reported error (0x800CCC0E) : 'Outlook is unable to download folder Inbox from the IMAP e-mail server for account localhost. Error: Unable to connect to the server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).'

    I followed your directions faithfully -- port 143 for incoming server, and all that -- but am stuck. Any suggestions? Thanks, Ben!
  • Try turning off your firewall temporarily. Also, test that you have mercury
    set up properly by trying to connect with outlook express. Another thing to
    try is connect using you ip address instead of local host.
  • arthurpjohnson
    Thanks for your reply, Ben. I tried each of the above things -- only I had to use Windows Mail instead of Outlook Express, because I am running Vista -- no joy. I tried using my IP address AND my IP address in brackets. Same errors. I am running Vista Home Premium with Outlook 2003, Windows Firewall and NOD32 antivirus. Could it be that I didn't set up Mercury correctly? Thanks!
  • That could be it. Make sure you follow the directions for mercury
    install carefully. There must be some way to confirm that it works.
    Seems like a hassle but It's worth it to do it right.
  • Emily
    I am stuck at step 9. I have a university owned computer with thunderbird mail and my university email address. When I'm at home, such as now, I use Time Warner cable (service) but still use my thunderbird mail, as though TWC didn't even exist--the only difference is that I use a wireless router at home. I've never used my TWC email address at all. So it seems that I have 3 entities here; thunderbird, my university and my cable provider.

    So... do I get my user name and server info 1) my university or 2) Time Warner. Similarly, do I use my university email password (which is automatically associated with thunderbird), or do I use my router password (which I'm not even sure what it is)?

    I'm basically confused about how to pick correct servers, IP addresses and passwords.

    Thanks-
  • MDowns
    Thanks for the tutorial!

    I'm running into some trouble with step #9. When trying to set up the pop3 and it asks me to enter the email address, it will not accept my local host username and ip address as the email. I've read that I might have to enter brackets around the ip address to get it recognized, but that did not work either. Any suggestions??

    Thanks?
  • SHAWSKI
    Thanks for the article. Any tips on how to import *sent* messages into Gmail and have them appear in 'Sent Mail'? Gmail assumes they are *received* messages and shows the "From:" header instead of the "To:" header, and so on..
  • I separated them into batches, the sent messages I did last and when I
    imported them to gmail, I set gmail to tag all email in that batch with
    "sent".
    Of course if they are already in gmail, just search for all the email sent
    by your various email address, select all and tag them.
  • Justin
    Whenever I try to label stuff "sent" it tells me that I can't because it is a reserved system label. Any way around this?
  • Maybe just label it "sent_mail" or something. You can bulk rename them once
    they are in gmail
  • I see in the comments that some people have questioned the value of a complex setup like this. I for one can speak to the problems with trying to import large volumes of email into Gmail directly from a local app like Outlook into Gmail using the IMAP interface. It does not handle attachments well and generally seems to choke up.

    As for the Gmail upload tool, my guess is that it was an assignment for someone at Google and that they have little incentive to get all the idiosyncrasies of the Outlook format worked out. My guess is that it will choke up at lots of places. The benefits of having the email server in between is that the IMAP and POP protocols are highly standard and tested extensively for the various email clients. The chances of any given email client to be able to talk to a local email server properly are very high.

    I think this is an elegant solution and I will explore using an Outlook add-on I use with this setup. It is called Clear Context and let's me quickly file email threads. Right now I have it filing things to a PST file but I will test having it file directly to the local IMAP server and see if I can have Gmail pull emails from there periodically. This way I have a complex but hopefully stable solution for archiving emails out of my exchange mailbox into Gmail.

    I would not recommend the techniques being tried here to anyone who does not consider themselves an expert email user with detailed knowledge of email formats.

    I actually think there is a good business for someone to create an add-on for Outlook allows for archiving to Gmail but uses a technique similar to this to create a local cache that let's Outlook run at full speed and sends data to Gmail in the background. Sort of the way ZumoDrive has been able to do a great job of a cloud based local drive.

    great work with this article Ben.
  • Garth
    Hi,

    I have saved my .pst fiels on a disc, can I use your process for retrieving my files? They are form my old MS Outlook and now I am using gmail

    Thanks!!

    Garth M
  • Garth
    and meant to say I am using a macbook.

    thanks

    garth m
  • Some how you are going to have to open the .pst file. That is your first
    goal. Search for .pst readers or install the trial of outlook for mac.
    This method will work after that.
  • I would say that one option is to run Outlook under emulation to be able to work with these files. You can use Outlook inside a Parallels session on the Mac to connect to the local IMAP server. How you run your own local IMAP server on a Mac is another challenge, maybe there is a good OS X mail server.
  • Johnny
    hey ben and others:

    An easier (if slightly amoral) solution which also provides dates:

    1. Open a gmx mail account.
    2. Synch gmx imap w/Thunderbird
    3. Drag/drop all localhost mail to gmx account (the IMAP NEVER FROZE 4 ME, EVEN AFTER 9000 EMAIL!!)
    4. DL all GMX mail into Gmail using the gmailPOP service.

    TADA.

    GMX probably supports the use of tags/folders, too.

    I realize that this is sort of wrong, and that I shouldn't abuse gmx, but...well i did.
  • JustAnotherPoorSlob
    Ben,

    Cool idea with Mercury (IMAP from Notes to Gmail is a disaster). Ran into an interesting problem with Folders--maybe you have a suggestion?

    Have a few folders to transfer from Notes to Gmail and want to preserve the folders as labels. Set up the mercury server, and started uploading locally into folders I had created on mercury through IMAP and Notes.

    When I finally started Thunderbird, I noticed that none of the folders appeared--only the files in the "inbox".

    Figured that they must only want subfolders of inbox, so moved them all in notes

    Nothing

    Tried to move them back, now I'm getting IMAP errors--no such folders-and all my uploaded mails are gone

    Erased the lotus notes cache, now there's no folders and no mails.

    Any ideas?
  • This was PERFECT. Thank you for this. I'm reformatting my laptop and wanted a way to have multiple backups, and to send items to gmail with ease. This was it. Thank you very much for this article and tutorial.
  • Dan
    Thanks for this very helpful post! I hope somebody out there still follows the comments and would be willing to respond... If you could please answer the following question:

    When copy-pasting from Lotus Notes to the imap account, all the messages are converted to plain text, which, for some documents, is unacceptable, because you lose all the formatting, which sometimes make the email unreadable.

    Is there a way to preserve the emails in their original form with html format? For example, when forwarding an email from within Lotus Notes to a non-Lotus-Notes email address, you can do it as "plain text" (= what the copy-paste from Lotus Notes to imap account is apparently doing), or you can do it in "html format". I would like the latter to apply when I paste into the imap account. Is this possible? How?

    Thanks in advance,
    Dan.
  • When I say copy and paste - I mean select all "messages" or folders and copy
    them over. Don't open the message and copy it. Rather open the inbox, or
    sent messages, or ...as in my case... the archive folders and select all
    messages, go to the imap folder in lotus notes and paste them. You are
    essentially moving the messages from one folder (your archive) to a new
    folder (the imap folder). Hope this helps.
  • Dan
    Thanks for the quick reply. This is exactly what I'm doing, namely, I'm selecting a message, or a group of messages (not the text of a message!), going to the imap folder, and pasting the message(s).

    When I do that, the messages, of course, undergo some internal conversion, as they are internally saved as Lotus Notes objects. The conversion is such that it transforms the messages to plain text, as plain text is what I'm getting at the other end :(

    Now, I know Lotus Notes has the capability to do a much better job (because, when I want it to, it forwards emails as html just fine, so it knows hows to do it). I just don't know how instruct it to do said better job when I copy paste into the imap folder.

    Thanks,
    Dan.
  • Actually, I just checked my old mail from lotus notes in gmail and sure
    enough, they were all text, no formating. It is still usable for me (i
    didn't even notice) so I'm not sure what the solution is. My objective was
    to preserve it all in one place so I didn't care that the formating was
    lost.
  • Dan
    I agree that a "plain text" conversion is adequate most of the
    time. Alas, losing the formatting makes some email simply unreadable.

    I would therefore like to report here that I've found an alternative
    way to migrate from lotus notes and convert any set of selected emails
    to "eml" format, in a way that preserves the formatting. The "eml"
    format can be converted to the canonical MBOX format using such tools
    as eml2mbx (http://home.arcor.de/luethje/prog/) or eml2mbox
    (hrrp://www.broobles.com/eml2mbox). Alternatively, "eml" files can be
    directly imported to Thunderbird through the ImportExportTools add-on
    (http://www.nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/mboximpo...).

    The way to export Lotus Notes email does not involve IMAP. Instead,
    you configure you Lotus Notes client such that an 'export' option is
    added to your 'Actions' menu. This option converts the selected emails
    to "eml" files.

    The instructions are found here:

    "Lotus Notes Email Export"
    http://tech.niques.info/projects/lotus-notes-em...

    Perhaps you should include this information in your above post.

    Thanks again for the quick replies,
    Dan.
  • lotus notes
    Hi i m having problem in Lotus notes 7. In that i m created one folder and i m drag and drop my mail from inbox to that folder that mail move but when i try same in sent mail to that folder that mail was only copy into that folder but not delete from sent item. when we are doing a drag and drop then that mail cut from source and paste at destination that not happend . that mail keep in sent as wel as that folder. then how i can drag and drop mail but that mail should not in the sent box it should be in that folder only.
  • mutu26
    There is good tool which works with mails-opening .dbx files,as is known software is free,it restore mails,attached files,fix other mail files,program is compatible with Windows 2003, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows Vista, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows XP, Windows XP SP2 and any version of Outlook Express, installed on your PC,recovery represents the analysis of separate dbx files, because Outlook Express splits your mailbox into several files.
  • Alex Krenvalk
    USe-reading dbx files,program keeps all messages, contacts and attachments in the same file in spite of the fact, that it may be dangerous,works with corrupted files, that were damaged by any reason,safe to open files of dbx format, even when your mailbox is infected of seriously damaged as a result of power failure,extracts all messages as separate files in eml format, if you’d like to modify the path to output folder, that is set by default, it can be done with Choose Save Folder function.
  • @Ben: This is a very nice solution, specially for those of us with limited upload bandwidth. Setting up everything locally first, then leaving your computer turned on for a few days with Gmail pulling messages via POP at its own pace (and retrying at the inevitable fails) is much better than moving thousands of messages by hand via IMAP and worrying all the time about timeouts and disconnects. Thanks for sharing!

    PS.: Any news on transferring chats? I'd love to send some of my old ICQ conversation to my Gmail account. :)

    @Ana: you can use a service such as DynDNS.org (which I use), No-IP.com or many others. With them, you get a subdomain name (such as "yourname.dyndns.org") that always points to your dynamic IP address. But how it works? Well, many consumer-grade hardware firewalls support these services. You fill your username and password somewhere in its configuration screen, and they'll start sending your new IP address to the service whenever it changes, what in turn keeps your subdomain pointing to the right place. Alternatively, if your firewall doesn't support this feature, or if you don't use one, you can install a small software that sits in your tray and does the same. End result: in step 9, instead of writing "bs1999@70.241.139.3", you'd write something like "bs1999@yourname.dyndns.org".

    That's the theory, at least. I'm going to try it myself in a few days, but it's 99.9% certain it'll work as expected.
  • Ana
    I have dynamic IP so how can I set up Mercury server??
  • Nick
    This is awesome, thanks for the demo. I did however need a little bit more detail. I use Thunderbird and I seek to migrate everything to my Gmail account. The only step that got me stumped was installing mercury. How do I "step 3: installing software ... Make sure you set it up for both POP and IMAP when you get those options in the wizard"?
  • nirz
    I followed Chris's instructions (March 9 2008):

    I never heard from Ben, but I wanted to let everyone else know who reads this blog, that if you use Outlook Express, you can move all email to GMail very easily! I could have skipped ALL this. Here are the steps:

    1) Goto Gmail.com, Settings, Make sure IMAP is enabled, then click on “Configuration Instructions.” Select Outlook Express and Read!

    2) Follow instructions for Outlook Express! Drag/Drop your email!

    That’s it! Header information (dates, etc) are all transferred. If you set up folders, they act as GMail Labels too! So you can label as you drag and drop if you drop email into a specific folder (or just create a folder in Outlook Express). AMAZING!

    I did the IMAP settings in Google and Outlook Express, but I'm not sure about Copying and pasting email into gmail. I have 1000's of emails, so I don't want to be pasting all those emails individually. I just could not Drag and Drop the emails! Once I go to OE, my browser is minimized. Even if I have browser window and OE side to side, i can't sem to Drop the emails. Where do I drop the emails in gmail?

    Thanks
  • The best way to map folders to labels is to configure gmail to assign a label to everything it imports from a given folder - see the gmail account setup page when you first add the account to gmail. Then move 1 folder, then change the label that is applied, and move the next folder. Not the best, but the best I found. Actually, I just imported everything then used filters to apply labels. Search for terms like names and apply labels. Gmail has such awesome search though that folders - or labels are not as necessary as they were in outlook or lotus notes with its pathetic search.
  • Albert
    Thanks for your comments!

    By the way, what happens with the folder-label mapping with Mercury?

    Folders are going to be automatically mapped to labels? Dates issues should be solved with the Mercury-Pop technique, right?

    I will try to forward the ports from a Linux box to the Windows-Mercury box, cos I don't dare to leave a Windows directly to the internet hehehehehe...
  • I think you could set this up for incremental uploads. Once you have Mercury (it is an email server running on your computer) and you create a local account on it, you can add the mercury account as an IMAP account to lotus notes, then add the same account as an POP on gmail. Gmail will automatically pull any new messages that get added to your local email account. So all you have to do, is periodically copy and paste messages (you can select 100s at a time) in lotus notes from you main email account or archive folders, into the local mercury account. So in other words, lotus notes shows two accounts - your work account and all the folders with that, and your imap local mercury account. If you move messages from one to the other, gmail will pick them up. You might look at rules in lotus notes to either forward new messages directly to gmail (that's what I do) or rules to save them to the folder.
  • Albert
    I found your tutorial, REALLY interesting, and it's a very elegant solution to merge several sources.

    In my case, I just have one source to export: Lotus Notes... This is what I did. I tried first to export to Outlook with Transend, without success, so I exported first to Outlook Express and then with the import wizard import it to Outlook. That worked fine, but I have some special character issues (á, é, ó, ö, ñ).

    Anyway I decided to continue from that point to do some tests. I found a tool called Google Email Uploader, but it *just* seems to work with google apps, (not with normal gmail accounts). I used, with a google apps account, and I have like 175 messages dropped because of RFC messaging formatting issues, but worked quite fine.

    I found out the dates issue, for instance: an original message from 07/Nov/07, was uploaded as 08/Nov/07... This might be a serious problem, since I wouldn't be able to follow the dates. I read that this should be fixed with Mercury/Pop solution (I will try it).

    My major concern is that I would like to do this as an incremental process. I would like to upload emails every month or so on. I have several folders in my Notes client, and monthly there are new mails on each folder. It would be possible to do this incrementally? How?

    Thank you very much in advance, and congratulations on your tutorial, It has been very helpfull!
  • April
    I have copied with IMAP from Outlook Express to gmail according to the information of # 23. Thank you! That was great advice.

    My question: Do I have to recreate every single folder (I have loads ...) in gmail? Or is it possible to copy both folders and messages from OE to gmail?
  • steve
    to remove dupes try this, Ive used this and found it invaluable, just install, select the folders and it does the rest.

    http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/duplicate_remover/
  • dp
    To me, the bigger challenge is how to de-dupe all of my email archives without going through 50,000 messages manually. I saved off plenty of PST and NSF (and ccmail!) archives over the years but I know they contain dupes aplenty.
  • Matthew Gerke
    I recently transferred all of my emails to gmail and had the same problem with some (but not all) of the dates. I *believe* that the problem is that some of the messages have a "sent date", some have a "received date", and some have both. If the message does not have a "received date", then Gmail inserts the upload date into the "received date" field, and that is what appears in the mailbox view (but not, for some reason, the detailed view). Unfortunately, I haven't figured out a fix for this yet. Anyone know how to copy the "sent date" and insert it as the "received date" for 5000 emails?
  • I think I found an even easier way to do this, now that Gmail is IMAP capable. Try this:
    http://www.cjvandyk.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.a...

    Later
    C
  • Its worth it - I moved 10 years worth. I had to do the copy and paste - but since I was moving to mercury, I was able to do my whole folder at a time and much faster (since the server and the client were both on my laptop) then connect Gmail to your local account using your ip address and let google pull them in with pop3. It will take about a day...I moved about 45,000 messages and thats after deleting spam and ham (the email you asked for but didn't need like updates from netflix telling me my movie shipped).
  • Right - IMAP only lets you do so many at a time and is problematic
    about the dates. That is why I used the POP3 method in the article. If
    you set up your own email server (mercury) locally you can save
    yourself a lot of headaches. It takes longer to set up but it goes a
    lot faster. Since you can import the messages locally really fast in
    mecurcy, then set up google to pull them over time. I let it run over
    the coarse of 2 days. An it had them all, correct dates and all.
  • Well, I really doubt they will fix all the old email that are already imported but I could be wrong. I imagine they will fix the it for anyone that imports after this point...but you never know with Google. They surprise me all the time by doing the right thing.
  • Lindsay
    So we have come full circle! :o) And it was back in November you went throught this? So the question is how long to live with the situation in the hopes that Google is actually addressing it before I give up and spend another 48 hours following your original instructions...

    Anyway, thanks very much again Ben!
  • Ohh - right- which is why I imported them using POP3! That's why I used Mercury to create a local email account.
  • Is it an old version of lotus notes maybe?...you can try downloading a newer version (the link to the trial is in my post) or... if you really want those dates fixed (which I did, not very important but its a ego/data integrity thing for me - since it will be that way forever) Then you can use the Mercury method - its a pain but it works, like I said, I can open email from 1994 in gmail now and on rare occasions that has been useful.
  • Lindsay
    Okay, just found this at Gmail's Help Center:

    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?an...

    Incorrect dates on uploaded messages:

    Messages uploaded or copied into Gmail using IMAP may display the wrong date in your inbox or other labels. The correct dates should appear in conversation view.

    This is a known issue, and we appreciate your patience as we work to resolve it.
  • Lindsay
    Thank you for your quick reply. I should have specified, that IS what I did. I connected directly to Gmail just as you describe because I did not have any other types of accounts to deal with.

    On the Lotus Notes side, viewing the Gmail inbox, all the dates are correct. But on the Gmail side they are incorrect. I can't imagine why.
  • Lindsay -

    Hmm...Once its in gmail I don't know how to change the dates. But you could do a search and delete them then reimport them (just search for your old work address in the "to" field and delete everything). Then you can try mapping from lotus notes directly to you Gmail with IMAP.

    To do this open lotus notes and create a new inbox that point to gmail via imap. You should see your gmail emails start to appear there (or set up a new gmail account to import to first).

    Then open your work email (in lotus notes), select all the messages and copy them then go to the gmail inbox (in lotus notes) and paste them (now wait a long time for lotus notes to move all the messages). The should have the correct dates in gmail now.
  • Lindsay
    Hi Ben,

    Thanks for the fantastic tutorial. I successfully moved over several old Lotus Notes archives from my old job into Gmail. Even the conversations are linked together Gmail style!

    My only problem is this. Within Gmail, looking at my Inbox (under any label or All Mail) all the mail is listed with the date I moved the files over. WITHIN each email the date information is accurate, it is just the inbox view where the dates are wrong. But that means I cannot sort my 5 years worth of mail in chronological order.

    Any suggestions for remedying this? I would delete and re-import the mail if needed.

    Thanks!
    Lindsay
  • Thank you a lot Ben, I've been able to import my Outlook 2007 mails in my Google Apps GMail account, using Mercury/32 IMAP server and configuring my router to forward port 110 to my computer.

    The sole annoyment is that sent mail I imported are considered received mails in GMail and I can't force them to be moved to the Sent folder.

    Thanks for your tutorial!

    But now I read Chris comment from March 9th, 2008 and I think why would I've not simply configure IMAP directly between Outlook 2007 and GMail like described in that Help article: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?a...
  • Chris
    I never heard from Ben, but I wanted to let everyone else know who reads this blog, that if you use Outlook Express, you can move all email to GMail very easily! I could have skipped ALL this. Here are the steps:

    1) Goto Gmail.com, Settings, Make sure IMAP is enabled, then click on "Configuration Instructions." Select Outlook Express and Read!

    2) Follow instructions for Outlook Express! Drag/Drop your email!

    That's it! Header information (dates, etc) are all transferred. If you set up folders, they act as GMail Labels too! So you can label as you drag and drop if you drop email into a specific folder (or just create a folder in Outlook Express). AMAZING!
  • Chris
    Hey Ben. Although this looks to be quite the process for me, I wanted to run a few questions by you before I spend an afternoon/evening working on this.

    1) I use Outlook Express, not Outlook. What are the adjustments I will need to make to get this transfer to go smoothly?(Keeping original time stamps AND being able to meta-tag emails going into Gmail are VERY important to me) Should I just install Outlook (.pst files) and move everything there instead, or can I avoid this step by moving mail directly from OE (.dbx files) to Thunderbird.

    2) What will the final requirements be? I just have mail from Outlook Express (is a Hotmail account) to move. Will I need Mercury and Thunderbird with OE, or just Thunderbird with OE, or perhaps Thunderbird and Outlook.
  • Drew
  • Drew
    I have recently tried a number of ways of moving my email into my Gmail account with various different tools and methods.

    The most successful method I found is to:-

    1) Configure Outlook 2003 (where the majority of my email resides) with an IMAP connection to my Gmail account.

    2) Create two 'Favourite' folders, one to my Gmail inbox and another to Gmail Sent Mail (simply for ease of use)

    3) Open the .PST file that contains the email I'd like to move into Gmail.

    4) Select a bunch of emails you'd like to end up in your Gmail Inbox (try with 20 or so to start with)

    5) Drag the selected emails onto the Inbox and wait.... Outlook will gather it's thoughts and then move the items from the Inbox into Gmail's Inbox

    6) Check your Gmail Inbox to see the email sitting there in all their glory..

    7) To move the Sent mail it's exactly the same as above but ensure you move it to your 'Sent Mail' folder unlike me as I moved a bunch of Sent mail into my Gmail inbox


    Another trick I recently used to get my email from an old Gmail account into my new Gmail account was to:-

    1) Setup my old Gmail account with IMAP access

    2) Connect Outlook to this IMAP account

    3) Now I have both old and new Gmail accounts setup in Outlook

    4) Drag and drop the emails from one IMAP account to another! ; )

    5) Hey - presto - mobile email retaining date stamps and header information


    NOTES:

    I've not moved a high volume of mail as yet but moving a small amount takes a while, so tread carefully when attempting to move lots of mail, it maybe worth removing unnecessary attachments first.

    I find it useful to have Task Manager open with the Networking tab to view network traffic as Outlook appears to be Not Responding during the moving of mail

    This has worked for me okay so far, I've plenty more to move and will post further notes if i find anything else.
  • Another Ben S.
    Seems to be working - this is ingenious! Nice thinking!
  • scott
    Ben,

    One other thing I encountered I thought I'd document to you for use in
    your blog in case someone else runs into it. While copying email over
    from my old notes file to the new notes account I'd occasionally get
    this message, "Function Not Implemented by the Internet Messaging"
    When I finally narrowed it down to which messages were creating this
    error I found out they were invitations to meetings. So I deleted all
    of them in my various email files and everything proceeded without a
    hitch.

    Hope that saves someone some headaches.
  • Ben
    Great - glad to hear its working for you finally. Make sure you watch your storage limit in gmail - i bought the extra 10gb since my email now sits at 5.3gb of 16.2gb (there is an upgrade link at the bottom of the page in gmail). When I first did this they only had 4gb for free, looks like now it is up to 6.2gb for free.
  • Scott
    Ben,

    It was my anti-virus program doing it. Got it stopped now Thanks again!!!
  • Scott - you have 2 options:

    1) add you gmail account to thunderbird as an IMAP account (you might try setting up a new gmail account so you don't endanger your normal one) then in thunderbird move the messages to the gmail account.
    2) if your running mercury, test the connection by sending an email from gmail to your local account @your ip address

    gmail will sent the information to you public ip address, your router should forward it to your computer, then mercury should take the email and stick in your inbox...if this doesn't work then you might have the wrong port forwarded in your router. POP3 is port 110, imap is port 143
  • scott
    Hey Ben well I've made it as far as I have everything into Thunderbird, used the extension to delete duplicates and am trying to get Gmail to find me so as to fetch my email. Keep getting timed out messages from Gmail. I have it pointed to my public address just like you do with my thunderbird email account up, mercury running as well. I've logged into my router and specified for the machine I'm on to allow pop in on port 110. I've bounced the router, still timing out back at Gmail end.

    Any thoughts?
  • Rudolf, Google has a good tutorial on this on their website - you want to add your gmail as an IMAP account and then select all your old messages and copy and paste them into gmail. IMAP lets you move the messages back and forth - folders in outlook before tags in gmail, delete it in outlook, and it is deleted in gmail, and move it in outlook, from one pst to another, and it is added to outloook.

    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?an...
  • Scott - if notes was set up to connect to your vpn or work network, it might have settings that put it on wrong network. Try going to File > Edit current location > Ports, and make sure TCP/IP is checked. Also try disabling your firewall.
  • scott
    Hmm hope someone's still reading this. I'm trying to get my old lotus files into a format so I can upload to GMAIL. All the steps for going from Lotus to Mercury work until I try to configure the client using the wizard in lotus it seem to go okay but when i click on the new icon it creates I get a Error logging into server localhost: you must emable the Notes TCPIP port. Checking the notes client that ports show enabled.

    Any suggestions?
  • RH and knyttv, could you explain a little more how to import the Outlook mail into Gmail?
  • RH
    Agreed with knyttv... if your client is capable of IMAP communication, (I am using Outlook 2003 in Exchange mode), then pushing your archive items into a PST, then uploading them in IMAP mode to Gmail seems to be working great.
    I consolidated a bunch of old PSTs into a new one, then built a new Outlook profile to connect to gmail instead of the exchange server. I made the archive PST in the exchange profile the dominant PST in the IMAP mode, then dragged and copied the folders upto gmail...

    gmail automatically tags them with the name of the PST folder, and preserves all the header information.
  • You can use imap.google.com instead of all this. You just copy the emails to gmail in your outlook.
  • Not really. IMAP only lets you do so many at a time and is problematic about the dates. That is why I used the POP3 method in the article. If you set up your own email server (mercury) locally you can save
    yourself a lot of headaches. It takes longer to set up but it goes a lot faster. Since you can import the messages locally really fast in mercury, then set up google to pull them over time. I let it run over
    the coarse of 2 days. An it had them all, correct dates and all.
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