Can I 'split up' one gmail account which contains work and personal email?
May 8, 2010 6:58 AM Subscribe
I have my work and personal email in one gmail account. I may change jobs in the not-too-distant future. How can I separate the two?
Six years ago I got a gmail invite and snagged an address relevant to my job which I loved and thought I'd stay at forever. (Big mistake, I know...)
I've now got 1Gb of email, work and personal, all in the same account. I am considering a job offer from another business (nobody knows yet, so I'm posting this anonymously).
If I leave this job I would like to be able to separate the two. The leaving will be relatively amicable so I'm not too worried about this, but I don't want to have to spend the next couple of years responding to emails from whoever replaces me looking for information that I have. I'd rather just give them all the old emails.
However, I'd rather not just give them this account. The amount of personal mail is far bigger than the work mail.
I do have everything labelled pretty well. Ideally I'd like to be able to export all emails with specific labels and either import them into a new gmail account or a desktop (Thunderbird? Outlook?) client at the office where I work.
Is this possible? Any other suggestions on how best to handle this?
(I will deal with the other issue - of changing jobs and having an address relevant to my old job - separately.)
Six years ago I got a gmail invite and snagged an address relevant to my job which I loved and thought I'd stay at forever. (Big mistake, I know...)
I've now got 1Gb of email, work and personal, all in the same account. I am considering a job offer from another business (nobody knows yet, so I'm posting this anonymously).
If I leave this job I would like to be able to separate the two. The leaving will be relatively amicable so I'm not too worried about this, but I don't want to have to spend the next couple of years responding to emails from whoever replaces me looking for information that I have. I'd rather just give them all the old emails.
However, I'd rather not just give them this account. The amount of personal mail is far bigger than the work mail.
I do have everything labelled pretty well. Ideally I'd like to be able to export all emails with specific labels and either import them into a new gmail account or a desktop (Thunderbird? Outlook?) client at the office where I work.
Is this possible? Any other suggestions on how best to handle this?
(I will deal with the other issue - of changing jobs and having an address relevant to my old job - separately.)
Try Gmail Backup. I use it for offline archiving of email, and used it to transfer all my email from a normal Gmail account to a Google apps for domains mail account.
posted by ish__ at 7:17 AM on May 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by ish__ at 7:17 AM on May 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
This might be an inelegant way to do it, but you could download something like Thunderbird and have it retrieve all the mail (with, or without, deleting it on the server). You'll have a copy in a fairly usable format, which you can then run filters and sorts on so you can extract all the messages into appropriate folders.
I *think* you can then upload the messages to a new personal gmail account, but I'm not sure. I think if you set up the new account as IMAP, you can just drag the messages/folders to the new account and they will synchronize. The labels might get slightly messed up, but that is fixable on the gmail frontend for the new account.
posted by gjc at 7:48 AM on May 8, 2010
I *think* you can then upload the messages to a new personal gmail account, but I'm not sure. I think if you set up the new account as IMAP, you can just drag the messages/folders to the new account and they will synchronize. The labels might get slightly messed up, but that is fixable on the gmail frontend for the new account.
posted by gjc at 7:48 AM on May 8, 2010
You would IMAP it to THunderbird. Set up another GMail account you would give to the new guy. also set it up to IMAP to Thunderbird. Then drag the emails you want to move from your old email to the new one for the new guy and viola, they are in the new account. I would consider saving a copy of them in case you get called with questions.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:43 AM on May 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:43 AM on May 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
You might look at Google's instructions for "Backing up your mail with POP." You can enable POP in Gmail, then configure Apple Mail, Outlook/Outlook Express, Thunderbird, or other mail clients to receive the Gmail. Check for new messages to push all of them to your mail client, delete the personal ones, then reconfigure the mail client to not receive any more messages from your Gmail account.
posted by Houstonian at 9:48 AM on May 8, 2010
posted by Houstonian at 9:48 AM on May 8, 2010
Seconding IMAP. Get another email account (gmail or something else). Configure both email accounts in the IMAP client of your choice. Drag messages from one to the other. There is no step four.
posted by Brian Puccio at 10:53 AM on May 8, 2010
posted by Brian Puccio at 10:53 AM on May 8, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
1. Personal - I use this for friends and family only.
2. Shopping/Memberships/Subscriptions/Newsletters = I use this email for my online shopping and any site that requires I sign up as a member or sends me monthly newsletters.
3. Professional = I use this one for all my professional emails outside of my work that pertain to my education and certifications or if a former student would like to keep in touch. I also forward important work emails to this account.
4. Junk = I use this email when I HAVE to sign up somewhere I don't think I'll ever visit again.
I check 1 daily and 2 and 3 weekly. I'll sign in to 4 occasionally to clean out the spam. This system works for me and keeps things organized pretty well.
YMMV.
posted by NoraCharles at 7:16 AM on May 8, 2010 [1 favorite]