Migrate emails from one gmail account to another
I am trying to use Thunderbird to move emails from one gmail account to another (consolidating two gmail acccounts). I was able to get all the emails I wanted from gmail account 1 into Thunderbird, and I started the process of putting those emails from Thunderbird into gmail account 2 using the instructions below. However, only 347 of the emails actually showed up in gmail account 2, and then it stopped. I've tried starting it again, doesn't work. On Thunderbird, there is a constantly updating message at the bottom "Copying message X of 74000 to saved" ("saved" being the folder in gmail account 2 where I'm sticking these). But nothing showing up in gmail account 2 after the first 347. Any thoughts?
Step 5: Copy the imported emails in to your Gmail Account 1) In Thunderbird, in the navigation pane on the left, expand "Local Folders" and then select the folder below that has the name of the label that you are importing to Gmail 2) In that folder select all of the emails contained in the folder, right-mouse click the selection, and select 'Copy to - <gmail_account> - <label_name>'. (where gmail_account = the email address of your Gmail account and label_name = the path to the label that you want to import the restored emails to) 3) All emails will now be importing to the label that you choose. Please be patient, as it will take a while to upload all of the emails to Gmail.
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Given IMAP uses folders and Gmail uses labels. I would not be surprised if you saw nothing until the thing was complete. If it completes.
Experience indicates more than about 500 email at a time will result is random dropped mail etc. . Have you checked the size of the mail you are trying to move against the bandwidth Google allow on a daily basis? Once you exceed it Thunderbird and you will be locked out of your account for 24 hours usually and whatever uploads were happening at the time will die.
IMAP is a mail synchronization protocol, not a filing system or an archive. It is not designed or tested to upload thousands of email at a time.
The Web appears to be full of folk suggesting transferring mail through Thunderbird. Basically it is a bad idea that works often enough that folk blog about it and say it does work. Basically Google have supplies the backup, but failed to apply themselves to the restore part. Instead they send folk off to do things that really are not a good idea. They create the files, so they should be able to read the things.