Import contacts and old email from one gmail account to another?

billwill

Anyone know a simple way to do this? I tried to do it with google, but it said it can't import contacts/mail from one gmail account to another. There has to be a way though.

It will need to be fast and easy (ie i don't have time to drag each email over), not because I'm lazy, but because I truly only have a small window of time to do this transfer.

Thanks.

ProPatriaMori

You could use an e-mail program as a go-between. e.g. IMAP to sync to Thunderbird (which I think also had a contacts add-on) and then set it to point to the new g-mail account.

billwill

ProPatriaMori wrote: »

You could use an e-mail program as a go-between. e.g. IMAP to sync to Thunderbird (which I think also had a contacts add-on) and then set it to point to the new g-mail account.

How long would that take? And how would I do that? I don't know what IMAP is...same with Thunderbird.

ProPatriaMori

billwill wrote: »

ProPatriaMori wrote: »

You could use an e-mail program as a go-between. e.g. IMAP to sync to Thunderbird (which I think also had a contacts add-on) and then set it to point to the new g-mail account.

How long would that take? And how would I do that? I don't know what IMAP is...same with Thunderbird.

Depends on how big the account is. IMAP is an e-mail protocol for receiving messages that Google offers. Thunderbird is an extendable e-mail program made by Mozilla, the same friendly folks who make Firefox.

What I'm advising you to do is go to GMail and check out its help pages about setting up Thunderbird with IMAP with your old account. Once you get that working, have Thunderbird download all your e-mail messages from that account. Get a Thunderbird add-on that will sync your Google contacts with Thunderbird's address book. Then set up your new Gmail account with Thunderbird, put all the messages in there, and have it sync with Thunderbird's address book.

If your account is huge and full it could take a while, but it shouldn't actually take much work.

uean

Only problem with what you're suggesting is that the emails are then only in the Thunderbird client, but still sitting in the old gmail account. If he is using the web from his new gmail account, he won't have access to the emails in the other account.

Minor quibble.

Whats the difference between IMAP and POP3? I use Outlook to pull all my gmail in via POP3 and its great (I used thunderbird but the calendar in Outlook is so much better).

Anyway, Thunderbird is a really good tool. There are addons for Thunderbird that let you forward mass mail out to accounts. So you could pull eveyrhting in from your old gmail, then forward it all into your new gmail address. Finicky. Maybe not worth the time. If you dont need it all under one account though, the suggestion is great.

ProPatriaMori

uean wrote: »

Only problem with what you're suggesting is that the emails are then only in the Thunderbird client, but still sitting in the old gmail account. If he is using the web from his new gmail account, he won't have access to the emails in the other account.

Negative. IMAP will sync the e-mail client and the server. In my scenario Thunderbird is being used as a middleman to take the messages from one account and then put them in the other.

It's how I moved all my e-mail from non-Gmail accounts to my Gmail account.

mts

you could just setup gmail to check another email account, in this case being a second gmail. it will then downlaod them to that account.