How to bulk forward old messages from one gmail account to another?

January 12, 2012 7:16 AM

[bulk forwarding/importing from one gmail account to a personal gmail account]: not.tech.savvy.person needing help.

is it possible to bulk select and forward emails from one gmail account (a work one) to another gmail account? needing to forward several hundred emails in one account to a new one. these are old messages and not messages that are new/incoming.

i have already looked at this thread but to be honest, i'm not tech.savvy enough to know if it applies in this case. not sure if it is gmail to gmail.

already tried filtering plus forwarding and that did not seem to work.

would appreciate any suggestions; especially those in non.super.tech.ese.

thanks!
anya

posted by anya32 to Technology (6 answers total)

Best answer: The best way to do this is via IMAP. Not being a teacher nor a professional help desk person, I will over simplify this answer, but what I would do is first go to the settings on both gmail accounts and make sure IMAP is turned on. Then I would download a copy of Thunderbird to my pc. I would set up both accounts on T-Bird. Then, I would highlight the emails I wanted to move and right click. In the menu, one choice will be "copy to". I would select that and indicate where (the other account) I wanted to copy them to and hit select and you will have copied them from one account to the other. There may be a much easier way or I am sure someone can explain it better, but if not, this will work.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 7:38 AM on January 12, 2012 [2 favorites]

IMHO, I would avoid putting the emails on to your PC, you can get your newgmail account to grab all the existing emails from the oldgmail account. I have done this same thing.

Read Nutcraker028 reply in this thread.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=0764283623121912&hl=en


Essentially you are enabling your oldgmail to allow POP access for ALL EMAIL.
Then you are adding a POP account in your newgmail that points to your oldgmail.

It doesnt do it all at once because it is throttle by gmail. It took about a day (very bad memory sorry) for me to xfer all my email.

There are two caveats.
* I dont know how it works with the 'Sent' stuff and other non-Inbox folders
* Nor do I know how it works with 'Chat' history.

best of luck!
posted by njk at 9:38 AM on January 12, 2012

Do it via IMAP.
posted by dgeiser13 at 10:01 AM on January 12, 2012

Best answer: Thunderbird and IMAP. Current version of Thunderbird has automatic IMAP setup for Gmail accounts.
posted by flabdablet at 10:47 AM on January 12, 2012

Response by poster: thank you! i will try these options tonight and report back (for future folks).
anya32
posted by anya32 at 4:54 AM on January 13, 2012

Response by poster: thunderbird worked wonderfully! i did not have to try out the other ideas because it was easy and helped transfer the files. thank you very much everyone!
posted by anya32 at 11:31 AM on January 24, 2012