Migrating from Google Gmail.com to Microsoft Outlook.com

[IainB]

Looks like this is now finally feasible, non-problematic and easy, thanks to a migration tool provided by Microsoft.   
The post (link below) from the Microsoft Outlook Blog explains it in detail. The other two posts are relevant for background for those of us who may feel themselves to be reluctant or locked-in captives of Gmail.   

• Outlook Blog - Outlook.com makes it even easier to switch from Gmail
  

  by Naoto Sunagawa, December 11 2013
  Today, we are announcing a new service that makes it easier than ever to import your Gmail account to Outlook.com. This will be rolling out to everyone over the coming weeks, so if you don't have access to it yet, check back soon.
  (Read the rest at the link.)
  ___________________

• The case against Gmail | ZDNet
  

  By Ed Bott for The Ed Bott Report | October 29, 2013
  Summary: Gmail was a breath of fresh air when it debuted. But this onetime alternative is showing signs that it's past its prime, especially if you want to use the service with a third-party client. That's the way Google wants it, which is why I've given up on Gmail after almost a decade.
  (Read the rest at the link.)
  ___________________

• How I switched from Gmail to Outlook.com (and how you can too)
  

  By Ed Bott for The Ed Bott Report | October 31, 2013
  Summary: So long, Gmail, it was nice knowing you. After nearly a decade, I've finally moved my personal email away from Google's service. If you're considering doing the same, here's a step-by-step guide to help you set things up the right way.
  (Read the rest at the link.)
  ___________________

  
  

[techidave]

and if one wants to move from Office 365 for education(Outlook) to Google apps for education (gmail), then is there something to help going the opposite direction?

[IainB]

@techidave: There may well be a migration path from Office 365 for education(Outlook) to Google apps for education (gmail), but I wouldn't know, sorry.
I was specifically looking just at the the migration from Google Gmail.com to Microsoft Outlook.com.

[techidave]

That's ok IanB.  I should have started a new thread.  I think Google does have some converters but not sure if they do for Office 365.  And maybe I don't want to go down that path, but we are looking at Google Apps and Chromebooks for our school. 

Finding the Office web apps on our office 365 for education portal is terribly difficult.  we don't need to use them as I have the desktop version installed on all of our machines.  I was looking at those students who cannot afford to have a new version of Office installed. 

So enter Google Docs.  they updated the Google spreadsheet yesterday so it does have more features.  Now if they would just do their Presentation app ...

[tomos]

Looks like this is now finally feasible, non-problematic and easy, thanks to a migration tool provided by Microsoft.    
The post (link below) from the Microsoft Outlook Blog explains it in detail. The other two posts are relevant for background for those of us who may feel themselves to be reluctant or locked-in captives of Gmail.    

• Outlook Blog - Outlook.com makes it even easier to switch from Gmail
  

  by Naoto Sunagawa, December 11 2013
  Today, we are announcing a new service that makes it easier than ever to import your Gmail account to Outlook.com. This will be rolling out to everyone over the coming weeks, so if you don't have access to it yet, check back soon.
  (Read the rest at the link.)
  ___________________

Doesnt seem to be implemented yet here (instructions are confusing, linking to my Outlook.com account where I cannot find anything) - will check again.
This helps:

If the link to run the import tool doesn't work

Here's another way to launch the tool.

    SIgn in to your Outlook.com account.

    Click the Options icon Options icon, and then click More mail settings.

    Under Managing your account, click Import email accounts.

    Click Google.

the "Import email accounts" doesnt exist here yet. So definitely not fully rolled out yet - will wait for this and try it out then.

[daddydave]

Popping my head in...

Slightly off topic, but I didn't appreciate how complicated it was to migrate a Gmail account to another Gmail account until I had to change my email address. Found out that Google Takeout and IMAP didn't really work as well as I expected. Google really ought to make a Gmail-to-Gmail migration tool to make it beneficial to stay with Gmail when changing addresses. Worse, all the neat little Google services like Google Drive/Finance/Play/Maps/Google+ have their own little quirks and where a move-to-new-account tool was provided, it was always incomplete. I really wanted to keep my existing Google account and just change my email address, although in retrospect that was naïveté on my part. I would have even paid for an all-in-one tool to do that, that's what I did with Evernote I became a premium user for a month, it was something like $5, and then I had enough bandwidth to import my .enex file representing all my data into new account.

[TaoPhoenix]

From another angle, do we have any info about the content mining practices of Microsoft? To me this is a new wrinkle in the "meme".

To me the whole Google-Microsoft thing is a Scylla and Charybdis mess. (Greek Myth reference here at Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_Scylla_and_Charybdis )

Weren't we all grumpy about the ails of Outlook the local program back in the day? So Gmail is good ol' Gmail, "now with more spying." So what's preventing Microsoft from pulling something sneaky? There aren't many more places to go. We just saw Yahoo get Fubar'ed for *three days* this week, and they're far from great. I have only stuck with them in this amused sense of "they're (NOT-Google) and (NOT-Microsoft)." I don't know of any serious 4th entrants to the party. (And even then I don't think I'd trust them to be around for X more years per se - too many smaller projects finally running into the ground! Yikes)

Remember, this is MS of the Windows 8-series fame. And some rumblings about other fresh lock-in tendrils.

[wraith808]

the "Import email accounts" doesnt exist here yet. So definitely not fully rolled out yet - will wait for this and try it out then.

I wonder if it is rolling out to users in waves.  My account does have it.

[IainB]

...I didn't appreciate how complicated it was to migrate a Gmail account to another Gmail account until I had to change my email address ...

I'm curious - why did you "have to" change your email address?   
(I don't see why one would ever have to abandon an email address, unless it wasn't your personal one in the first place - e.g., under a corporate email domain name.)

You are spot on about the difficulty of migrating one Gmail account to another though. Ages back, I set up a duplicate "[name].backup@gmail.com" email account to mirror my usual Gmail account. It was far from satisfactory. I ended up using a Google Group as a backup. That worked rather well and also meant that when I wanted to access or reply to my Gmail from within a corporate domain that blocked personal Gmail usage, I could always get at my Gmail as it was via the medium of a discussion group (which aren't usually blocked by network security access control).

[tomos]

Weren't we all grumpy about the ails of Outlook the local program back in the day? So Gmail is good ol' Gmail, "now with more spying." So what's preventing Microsoft from pulling something sneaky?

Yes, part of the paid version of Outlook.com is that it's "ad-free". So I kind of presume it's there already (but havent looked at the T&C).


[edit] Ed Bott says: "There’s no such thing as a free lunch, of course. The web version of Outlook.com includes unobtrusive ads that appear to the right of the main email window. Those ads are not context-sensitive: the advertising engine does not use the contents of the current message or other messages in your mailbox to determine which ads to display, as Gmail does. Incoming and outgoing messages do not include ads." link [/edit]

[Vurbal]

Regardless of any ad network issues it's a known fact that Microsoft's datacenter links aren't encrypted which means the NSA has full access to them. We know that because just a month or 2 ago they announced they would be looking into encrypting them. Google OTOH encrypted their connections earlier this year when they discovered governments were accessing those pipes via arrangements with infrastructure providers.

Then again since Google doesn't provide anyone, including themselves a record of keywords used for ad matching I don't find the whole issue particularly troubling. There are lots of things that concern me about Google but that isn't one of them.

Given Microsoft's long and incredibly consistent history of making excuses about blatant security holes for years before finally fixing them they certainly wouldn't be a company I'd turn to if I wanted more privacy.

[IainB]

...Given Microsoft's long and incredibly consistent history of making excuses about blatant security holes for years before finally fixing them they certainly wouldn't be a company I'd turn to if I wanted more privacy.
_______________________

Yes. In terms of security/privacy, they're all probably about as bad as each other, with any differences likely to be marginal at best. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
Public email servers and web-based email services in general would presumably tend to be in the same basket, with those that offer encryption apparently being driven out of business by the likes of the NSA or their counterparts in other countries (QED).

[Stoic Joker]

...Given Microsoft's long and incredibly consistent history of making excuses about blatant security holes for years before finally fixing them they certainly wouldn't be a company I'd turn to if I wanted more privacy.
_______________________

Yes. In terms of security/privacy, they're all probably about as bad as each other, with any differences likely to be marginal at best. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
Public email servers and web-based email services in general would presumably tend to be in the same basket, with those that offer encryption apparently being driven out of business by the likes of the NSA or their counterparts in other countries (QED).

While picking on the Email providers do keep in mind that SMTP is about as secure as a Snail Mail Post Card. Because that avenue of exposure has always existed...it's just being exploited by the best of the worst at this point.

[wraith808]

While picking on the Email providers do keep in mind that SMTP is about as secure as a Snail Mail Post Card. Because that avenue of exposure has always existed...it's just being exploited by the best of the worst at this point.

That just gave me a new meaning for that acronym... Snail Mail To Post

[Carol Haynes]

If you are going to migrate from GMail why on earth would you choose Outlook.com - I use it with an old hotmail account occasionally and find the whole experience pretty unpleasant. Plus I trust Microsoft server maintenance even less than Google!

If you want to use the desktop Outlook why not just access GMail via IMAP - works pretty well here.

[40hz]

^Agree with Carol. If you're using GMail, use an email client that supports IMAP (Outlook,T-Bird et al) and go from there. Since your mail is synced to the server you always have a local copy of everything. And your mailbox (including your folder structure and sent email) is identical no matter where or how you access it. Makes life easy if you ever change email providers. Everything local will automatically start syncing up to the new email server when you log on. Most people with huge mailboxes just log in and leave it up overnight. Next morning, they're all set.  

AFAIK GMail is the only free email service that also provides free IMAP. Pretty much everyone else is charging for IMAP even if they'll still give you a POP account for free.

[tomos]

My problem is:
For years I've been using Gmail + POP3 to Thunderbird -
the mail is organised in Thunderbird - and is *not* organised in Gmail

So, in order to change anything, I'll have to organise all that stuff in gmail....
Guess I could just start a new Tbird profile for 2013 onwards, and delete the rest from a new organised gmail+Thunderbird IMAP.
Dump a copy of everything onto Outlook.com as a backup first

[40hz]

My problem is:
For years I've been using Gmail + POP3 to Thunderbird -
the mail is organised in Thunderbird - and is *not* organised in Gmail

So, in order to change anything, I'll have to organise all that stuff in gmail....

I could be wrong so back things up first, but...

I think if you switch the settings in GMail to use IMAP, and then change the server settings in TBird to use the GMail IMAP servers, your folder hierarchy and existing message store should be preserved and replicate back up to GMail.

Alternatively, you could create a "new" account using the IMAP settings in TBird, and then just move the folders in the old TBird POP account into it. (Again you'll want to have a backup made first.)

IIRC, when I switched my GMail accounts from POP to use IMAP I didn't need to rearrange or do anything. Because prior to the change, all my custom folders were local anyway.

The only thing that might trip you up are the storage limits if you're one of those people who keep everything (especially huge PDFs and other enclosures) in your email app and use it as a filing cabinet

[IainB]

While picking on the Email providers do keep in mind that SMTP is about as secure as a Snail Mail Post Card. Because that avenue of exposure has always existed...it's just being exploited by the best of the worst at this point.

That just gave me a new meaning for that acronym... Snail Mail To Post

Har-de-har-har. Very droll.    

[IainB]

I could be wrong so back things up first, but...
I think if you switch the settings in GMail to use IMAP, and then change the server settings in TBird to use the GMail IMAP servers, your folder hierarchy and existing message store should be preserved and replicate back up to GMail.

Yes, that is how it seems to work - from my experience at any rate. Quite nifty really.

[40hz]

I could be wrong so back things up first, but...
I think if you switch the settings in GMail to use IMAP, and then change the server settings in TBird to use the GMail IMAP servers, your folder hierarchy and existing message store should be preserved and replicate back up to GMail.

Yes, that is how it seems to work - from my experience at any rate. Quite nifty really.

Thx IainB!

It makes perfect sense it should since IMAP uses a synchronization rather than a "store and download/upload" approach.

But it's been a while since I made the switch. I didn't know if GMail had since changed anything, or placed restrictions or limits on shifting old accounts over.

[tomos]

^^ thanks people for the IMAP info

[IainB]

@40hz: I didn't know it worked like that until I was playing with the EverDesk client proggy recently - trialling it - and I was very surprised that this 2-way syncing seemed to be going on. It made things a bit slow sometimes, presumably moving large chunks of data back and forth when you changed something in the client email database (?), but I think the slowness might in part have been due to my having a relatively slow ADSL+ connection.

[Carol Haynes]

GMail is quirky in its approach (like POP doesn't work the way it is supposed to) but IMAP seems to work fine.

The only real issue with GMail is privacy but then ANY email service is hosted by a provider somewhere (even if you pay for your own server at a data centre) so as far as I can see GMail are relatively honest about what they do (in their despicable way) - MS have just been despicable in the past and resisted being honest until caught - and anyway just because they say they don't automatically gather info from email and document contents today doubtless at some point when no one is looking there will be tiny change in T&Cs to allow them to do what they like.

Apple are probably worse than both but who really knows - just my opinion.

[superboyac]

GMail is quirky in its approach (like POP doesn't work the way it is supposed to) but IMAP seems to work fine.

The only real issue with GMail is privacy but then ANY email service is hosted by a provider somewhere (even if you pay for your own server at a data centre) so as far as I can see GMail are relatively honest about what they do (in their despicable way) - MS have just been despicable in the past and resisted being honest until caught - and anyway just because they say they don't automatically gather info from email and document contents today doubtless at some point when no one is looking there will be tiny change in T&Cs to allow them to do what they like.

Apple are probably worse than both but who really knows - just my opinion.

so for email services, which of the big three would you use?  for some reason, MS still has a better reputation for privacy than google, but why?