Migrating one gmail account to another
May 3, 2011 11:41 pmLeave your thoughts
Looking for an easy way to transfer all your emails from one Google account to another? Here’s a good solution. I have numerous Google accounts all for different purposes; personal; business; backup etc. and for a time they all co-existed peacefully performing their duties with diligent efficiency.�However over time my Google Apps account and my personal Gmail account became sworn enemies fighting for attention.�They both contained important information and it was a pain having to log in and out to access different services. Google do now allow you to log in to multiple accounts but it doesn’t work for all services, plus having an Android phone meant that I really needed to make a choice, I needed to decide which was going to be my main account. �The time came to retrench – I decided to consolidate into one account, but of course I needed to move my data out of one account and into another. There are lots of issues when it comes to transferring data between Google accounts (think Analytics, AdWords, Picasa, Webmaster Tools etc.), but one of the biggest and most important concerns was moving over 6gb of email data from one Gmail account to another. I’m aware that there tools & techniques that could achieve this for free (and I might address them in other blog posts) however there were a number of key factors that influenced my decision to use a paid service:
- I wanted to maintain the integrity/ structure of my email data e.g. labels, starred email, date sent and received.
- I didn’t want to use too much bandwidth. �At the time of the transfer I was on a capped data plan (I live in Australia!) – transferring the data would have eaten all my bandwidth and cost me more than the price of the transfer service.
- I was looking for a robust solution that wouldn’t buckle or time-out under due to the volume of data.
- I also wanted a solution that wasn’t time consuming and didn’t need constant user input.
The solution I found is Migration BoxUsing this service satisfied all of the above criteria; it maintains the structure of your Gmail account; the transfer is carried out using their servers (across an encrypted connection) so it doesn’t use your bandwidth, plus you can just enter the details of the two accounts (source and destination) and walk away – no more user input is required. Once you have set the transfer going you can switch your computer off and head down the pub if you like, or if you’re like me, you can neurotically check the live progress every 30 seconds to make sure it’s working (did I say I required a solution with minimal user input?!). Anyway my transfer went flawlessly so it’s a decent tool and a service that I’d definitely recommend.
Categorised in: Computer
This post was written by WillyNilly