How do I transfer Gmail to Gmail?

March 1, 2006 10:10 AM

How do I transfer all my email from one Gmail account to another Gmail acocunt?

I have two Gmail accounts one is my screen name @ gmail and another using fistname.lastname @ gmail. I want to transfer all the email in one account to the other.

My ultimate goal is to drop (delete) my screen name account and use only my firstname.lastname account.

There seems to be lots of apps for converting other email formats to Gmail but nothing going from Gmail to Gmail.

I really don't want to have to forward everything. And I'm tired to my email being emailed "on behalf" of another version of myself.

Anyone have any ideas?

posted by thefinned1 to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Gmail has pop support doesn't it? Download it in one of the apps there's a converter for, and then reupload with that converter.
posted by fvw at 10:41 AM on March 1, 2006

I know this is off-topic, but I use two different Gmail accounts and it works out terrific for me. My "real name" account is for work, school, anything professional, and my "screen name" account is for friends and anonymous email stuff. Gmail even makes it easy to check both, because the logout redirects right back to the login page (unlike Hotmail). And I never worry about accidentally sending an X-rated joke to one of my professors.
posted by MrZero at 11:02 AM on March 1, 2006

Couldn't you just theoretically forward it all?
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:25 PM on March 1, 2006

Yes. I could forward it all but that would take forever. I can't seem to figure out how to forward entire conversations.

I am on fvw's advice and have used POP to get my email on my PC but am running into problems getting it into my other gmail account.
posted by thefinned1 at 4:15 PM on March 1, 2006

If you use Firefox, you can download Gmail Manager. This allows you to manage multiple gmail accounts at once.

Also, Gmail now has forwarding. I forward one gmail address to the other and it just shows up nicely in my [e-mail] account. The default reply email is even my main (preferred) account, not the email address it came from. And better yet, it comes straight from the person who sent it, not you @ yourotheraddress or "on behalf of." It's just right there, exactly what you're looking for.
posted by bozichsl at 5:16 AM on March 2, 2006

I used the GMail Loader to get a few years of mail into gmail after getting my account
posted by exhilaration at 12:44 PM on March 2, 2006

gExodus is a GUI version of GMail Loader that I have been using just this week to transfer email out of my Oulook and up to Gmail. Its uploaded about 98% of messages, there are a few it just won't do for some reason and I can't figure out why. But its close enough.

Your email will just need to be in mbox format, so grab your gmails in Outlook Express via POP and then put them in the correct folders that you want to maintain. Then navigate to the message store (you can find where it is in the OE options) and copy all the DBX files to a folder on your desktop.

Download a program called DBXConv and it will allow you to convert the dbx files to MBOX files. Its a command line program. Just follow the instructions that come with it.

Now you can upload your MBox files to Gmail. Run gExodus and point it to the folder on your desktop. OE would have exported each email folder as a file, so you will be uploading 1 "folder" at a time to gmail. This works great because it will allow you to label the mail for that folder appropriately. So if you had emails in the old account labeled "house", then put them into a folder called "house" in OE, you should now have an MBox file called house.mbox. Choose this file with gExodus and type the label "house" into the program...hit the button and there they go.

I may also recommend using [e-mail] as your gmail upload address. This will still go into your account but allow you to filter on recipient name contains +house for further labeling, etc.

Hope this helps!
posted by Chuck Cheeze at 3:37 PM on March 3, 2006