Migrating Email from Google

To copy the email from the legacy Google-service to the new server, you can use the IMAP Copy mail migration tool below. Here are the steps.

Part 1: Configure Google

We need to set up Google to work with the IMAP Copy tool. Make sure when you go to https://mail.google.com/ that you are logged in to your Snowbank.ca email address, and not some other Gmail address.

To check or change which account you are using, click the circle profile image at the top right to logout or switch accounts.

Turn off Conversation Mode

  1. At the top right, click the ⚙️ gear icon for settings.
  2. Click 'See all settings'.
  3. Scroll down to 'Conversation View'. Select 'Conversation view off'.
  4. Scroll down and click save changes.

Turn on IMAP

  1. At the top right, click the ⚙️ gear icon for settings.
  2. Click 'See all settings'.
  3. Click the 'Forwarding and POP/IMAP' link on the top menu bar.
  4. Scroll down to IMAP access and select “Enable IMAP”.
  5. Then scroll down and click the 'Save Changes' button.

Turn off Special Labels

  1. At the top right, click the ⚙️ gear icon for settings.
  2. Click 'See all settings'.
  3. Click 'Labels' at the top settings menu bar
  4. On the ➡️ far right side you will see a column of check boxes that say 'Show in IMAP'.
    • We must turn them all off except Inbox, Sent and Drafts.
    • So only those 3 should have checks. All the other ones should be turned off. Eg., starred, snoozed, all mail, etc.
    • Your personal labels are below the divider, and should still be turned on.

Turn on Less Secure Access

The IMAP Copy tool is not designated by Google as an approved tool yet. So you need to allow less secure apps like it to connect.

  1. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps and login if it asks.
  2. Click the grey toggle button so that it turn on, changing colour to blue.

Note: make sure you are on the correct account. Click the circle profile image at the top right and make sure it lists your snowbank.ca email address.

If it says you need to turn off 2-step login, follow these steps:

Part 2: Get Your Email Ready

We need to make sure that we don't copy many duplicated emails, but also don't miss any email. Previously I had you turn off some special labels like starred and important and all mail. This means that only email with a label can be copied. Now we need to grab all email that does not have any label and label them.

Label Received Email

  1. Copy and paste this in to the search bar at the top of Gmail:
    -has:userlabels -in:sent -in:chat -in:draft -in:inbox
  2. You will get a list of emails. On the toolbar below the search box (with the 🗑️ delete button) click the 🔲 square at the ⬅️ left end to select all messages on the screen.
  3. Below that box there now should be a message saying all the conversations on this screen have been selected, but there are more. Click “Select all conversations that match this search”.
  4. On the toolbar below the search box (with the 🗑️ delete button) click the 🏷️ label button at the ➡️ far right.
  5. Type a name such as Unlabelled and click 'Unlabelled (create new)' under where you typed. When a dialogue box pops up, click 'Create'. Also click 'Ok' for the bulk action.
  6. At the bottom of the screen, you should see a black box popup that says all messages were added to the label. But it only lasts for a few seconds. It may keep saying 'Loading...' at the top. You can wait for several minutes, but in my experience it never goes away. Click the 'Gmail' logo at the top left, and you can wait for 5 or more minutes for peace of mind.

Label Sent Email

  1. To save a copy of email you have sent, copy and paste this in to the search bar at the top of Gmail:
    -has:userlabels in:sent -in:chat -in:draft -in:inbox
  2. You will get a list of emails. On the toolbar below the search box (with the 🗑️ delete button) click the 🔲 square at the ⬅️ left end to select all messages on the screen.
  3. Below that box there now should be a message saying all the conversations on this screen have been selected, but there are more. Click “Select all conversations that match this search”.
  4. On the toolbar below the search box (with the 🗑️ delete button) click the 🏷️ label button at the ➡️ far right.
  5. Type a name such as Unlabelled-Sent and click 'Unlabelled-Sent (create new)' under where you typed. When a dialogue box pops up, click create. Also click 'Ok' for the bulk action.
  6. At the bottom of the screen, you should see a black box popup that says all messages were added to the label. But it only lasts for a few seconds. It may keep saying 'Loading...' at the top. You can wait for several minutes, but in my experience it never goes away. Click the 'Gmail' logo at the top left, and you can wait for 5 or more minutes for peace of mind.

That's it! Your email is ready to be copied. I'll send more instructions tomorrow to actually copy all your emails. If you want to be sure, you can run the above searches again and see that nothing comes up anymore. That means it was a success.

Part 3: Use the IMAP Copy tool

To copy all the email from your old Snowbank Google account to your new Snowbank.ca account, you will need to have a good internet connection, have your computer be plugged in, and lots of time for the process to run. (Especially if you have more than a gig of emails.)

You will need to do this on a computer that can remain ON while all your emails copy as the process will copy all the emails to your computer and then to the new server.

Go to https://imapcopy.planethoster.com/en/

For the source server:

For the destination server:

ℹ️ You may have set your new password to be the same as the old password.

Start the migration

Click “Start the Copy”

If you immediately get an error, like an authentication error, it probably means the password or the server name or email address has a typo in it.

You will see a lot of technical stuff while it says 'transfer in progress'. You may have to scroll up to see the message. It will start by comparing the labels on your old Snowbank Google server and making those folders on the new Snowbank server.

Watch this line that is usually at the bottom: 33564/33626 msgs left

That number will go down to 0 of some number msgs left. When it's done, it will hopefully say no errors. If it takes more than an hour ago, you may get a disconnect error message, but the process is still happening on the server. Any other error, copy the error message or screenshot it and send it to me.

Part 5

Cleaning up your emails. Once you have finished the copy, everything will be on the new server. You can copy the 'sent' and 'sent-unlabbelled' to your sent folder. And your Gmail inbox to the normal Inbox. The other folders you can now use like you usually do on Gmail.