Okay, I need some help. I want to pull 10,000 Gmail messages from one Gmail account into another Gmail account. Any idea how I can do that without a lot of mess?

I don’t want to download all the messages via POP3 to a mail client and then forward or redirect every message to the new Gmail account. I can’t seem to find a “mass forward” in Gmail. Does that feature exist?

It looks like you have to open each of the 10,000 messages to find the forward feature. Is there a way to get my new Gmail account to tell my old Gmail account to “send me everything you have and I’ll keep it over here instead of over there?” Is there a separate program that will do this for me? Help!

75 Comments

  9. Hi David,
    Hire a temporary and give him or her your password to the account and have the temp spend a week forwarding the email. 🙂
    I think that’s what they do in the business world if they can’t outsource it to an overseas company to do the work. You might want to think about doing that since you can’t beat the hourly wage! 😉

  10. Now that’s a great idea, Chris!
    Now… can I trust the person I hire not to read all my 10,000 secrets before forwarding and BCC:ing a copy of each message to their account? Bwa-ha!
    😀

  12. Hi David,
    Outsource the project to a non-English speaking country — of course, the managers could copy everything and then charge up your credit cards and since they are overseas there wouldn’t be much you could do to get back at them. 🙂

  13. Chris!
    Ooof! The forwarding solution you found looks painful. It would take a loooong time to POP3 all those message and then redirect and then and then and then…

  15. Chris!
    I *could* do a little outsourcing — but with translate.google.com alive and well and waiting — they could run all 10,000 emails through that system and translate them on the fly!
    :mrgreen:
    Gah!
    I wonder if trained monkeys could do it…

  18. This may be a very personal reason that you don’t want to share, but why exactly do you even need to move gmail accounts?
    Anyways, the only suggestion I could think of is to POP3 it all to your computer, then forget about sending it to the new gmail account. Or if you need it as an archive, then save them, zip them into more manageable chunks and e-mail the files to your new gmail acct.

  19. Hi David,
    I made it to Treadmill Reviews!
    Of course, I don’t remember writing about a treadmill, but I’m sure the link doesn’t hurt with PageRank and Technorati. 🙂

  20. Transfering all of the data back and forth might attract attention from the “Men in Black” in addition to Askimet, Bad Behavior, and other anti-spamnation forces. 🙂
    I read something in Google Groups about how Gmail allows the government to search all of your email messages and to dispatch black helicopters to follow you everywhere you go — sort of like the scenes at the end of Goodfellas when the government was tracking Henry Hill.
    Putting all of your information into Gmail twice only guarantees that they will read all of the messages.
    Especially if you use the typing monkeys that have actually been trained by certain intelligence agencies to copy and forward everything. Didn’t these same folks train a cat to be a spy during the Cold War? I think that cat was assigned to Iraq for a while. 😉
    I suggest getting Mindguard for the ultimate protection.

    MindGuard works by leveraging your computer’s aluminum-based innards to both detect and emit psychotronic energy using advanced quasi-quantum techniques. Once a mind-control signal is identified and analyzed, MindGuard can generate a specially tuned anti-signal that will jam the incoming signal. If MindGuard is unable to properly identify the signal, it will generate psychotronic white noise to ensure the signal’s harmful message is scrambled.

    This is an interesting story that does raise some questions:
    From groups.google.com:

    Some privacy experts who otherwise give Google high marks say the
    company’s records could become a handy data bank for government
    investigators who rely on business records to circumvent Watergate-era
    laws that limit their own ability to track U.S. residents.
    At a time when libraries delete lending records as soon as a book is
    returned, Google should purge its records after a certain point to
    protect users, they say.
    “What if someone comes up to them and says, ‘We want to know whenever
    this key word comes up’? All the capability is there and it becomes a
    one-stop shopping center for all these kinds of things,” said Lauren
    Weinstein, an engineer who co-founded People for Internet
    Responsibility, a forum for online issues.
    Google officials say their extensive log files help them improve
    service, fight fraud and develop new products, and unlike many other
    online companies, it seems willing to pay for the enormous storage
    capacity needed to save the data.
    “If it’s useful, we’ll hold on to it,” said Nicole Wong, a Google
    associate general counsel.

    Pretty scary stuff. 😉

  21. Hi angela —
    Now that I am using Google Apps for Your Domain —
    http://urbansemiotic.com/2006/09/01/google-apps-for-boles-university-review/
    — I now have Gmail for my own domain. I am using the Calendar and the website and the email all via Google but with my brand. So… I don’t need “two” Gmail accounts and that’s why I want to import or merge all my Gmail mail into my BolesUniversity.com-Gmail.
    I think Google may have plans to allow the merging of accounts with the Your Domain Apps — and that would be great so I can use a branded version of Writely and Spreadsheets and Analytics and all the other Google stuff I use but now have to balance between two Google accounts.
    It’s interesting how the Gmail Notifier for Mac will allow my BolesUniversity.com account as valid but if I try to use the “Compose Mail” option I get an error message telling me to log out and back in again because there is some kind of Google confusion going on…
    It sure is great, though, to run all my email accounts through BolesUniversity.com-Gmail. Having everything in one place is just dandy!

  23. Hi Chris —
    If people don’t think Yahoo! and MSN and Amazon and Wal-Mart and any other big company on the web aren’t storing all your email and search data then they should re-evaluate their present reality!
    If you use a service to manage you calendar or contacts or email or life — everything you do is being copied and replicated and stored for later use. That is a fact of life now. It can all be had via a simple subpoena, and not a warrant, after 90 days.
    I don’t care if Google hands over all my mail to the government. There’s nothing going on in there that isn’t going on out here in public. I realize privacy protection should be protected in all instances, but sometimes its smarter to pick your fights instead of fighting over every bitty thing.
    I love how Gmail threads all my messages. I was in a huge discussion between four people yesterday and every message in the thread was organized into a threaded view so I could peel back through time to see who said what when. Fab!
    The same thing happens when I get email notifications here on blog posts. I don’t get 20 separate messages. I get one message with 20 threads. It makes getting caught up here super easy.
    I also now funnel all my “regular” email accounts through BolesUniversity.com-Gmail so I can get extra Spam protection, threaded views and all the other goodies. It’s a delight to be able to check 12 email accounts –- and also compose mail “from” those accounts, too — all in once place on the web and I am no longer tied to a specific machine or mail client to do it!

  24. Hi David,
    That’s why I have my Belgium country-code domain name.
    It provides protection because it doesn’t really exist. 😉

    For too long we have been told lies.
    The existence of the supposed European country of Belgium has been taken as gospel for years by members of the Liberati. It has long been held up as a shining example of Liberal philosophies in action.
    However, now is the time the truth be known.
    Belgium doesn’t exist.

    Source: Belgium Doesn’t Exist!
    I’m just having some fun with the paranoid people today.
    When I was searching for a way to forward email from one Gmail account to another, I kept on seeing threads with crazy conspiracy kooks writing about their fear of Google.
    I know it’s all silly. But, it was too much fun to pass up passing along some of the internet strangeness that’s out there.
    We all know that the G in Gmail doesn’t stand for George Bush.
    Or does it?
    Just kidding about everything, except for the Iraqi spy cat!

  25. Here’s a link to a declassified story about the CIA’s spy cat program:

    One of the CIA’s most bizarre Cold War efforts was Operation Acoustic Kitty.
    In declassified documents from the CIA’s super-secret Science and Technology Directorate, it was revealed that some Cold-War-era cats were surgically altered to become sophisticated bugging devices.
    The idea was that the cats would eavesdrop on Soviet conversations from park benches, windowsills and garbage containers. The cat was meant to just stroll up to the sensitive conversations, completely unnoticed.
    The clandestine cat’s electrical internals would then capture and relay the audio to awaiting agents.

    Speaking about the government being able to get information whenever they want it, I had a call the other day from an IRS agent asking questions about a case that I had worked on a while back. The government wanted info about a debtor they are investigating and must have been following every lead they could find.
    I told the agent I couldn’t release any information because of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act’s prohibition against releasing information to third-parties without authorization.
    About an hour later, I received a fax.
    It was a summons from the Internal Revenue Service commanding me to turn over the information they wanted.
    Of course, if I was suing an entity and I thought there was electronic information dealing with the subject matter, I could issue a Subpeona Duce Tecum for the information in a civil case. I could also ask for the same in a Request for Production during the discovery phase.
    It would be up to the company to decide if they wanted to comply or spend money fighting it.
    I always assume electronic documents will be available for review, especially now that companies routinely back up everything multiple times. Hitting delete doesn’t mean that the document has gone away.

  26. Hi Chris!
    I love it when we see your silly side! I don’t like eavesdropping cats! Obviously, those folks have never had a cat because cats don’t listen, cats do only what they wish; cats obey nothing but their own innate sense of entitlement!
    😀
    Now for your serious comment — did you comply with the fax request?
    How long are companies required by law to keep email sent in and that goes out? Forever? How large must the company be to comply with the law?

  27. David,
    There is a mail app called PINE which will “bounce” email, i.e. resend it without touching it (no forward mark in the subject, quoting etc.)
    This exists for Windows. You can select all mail, mark it for bouncing, and bounce it.
    Let me know if you want more info.
    -Fruey

  29. You can get PINE to work on a Mac under OSX very easily:
    http://www.washington.edu/pine/getpine/unix.html
    PINE prefers IMAP, I don’t know if you can use it with POP3. You can however use it to read unix mbox files directly, and therefore use fetchmail to get your mail into a mbox format and then open it with PINE. Maybe fetchmail could make you skip the PINE step altogether.
    You’d have to enable bouncing in the config screen (I am at work and cannot provide full info at the moment). You’ll also possibly need to enable multiple marking of messages…
    I could prepare a bit of a walkthrough later, let me know if the above makes sense already…
    -Fruey

  30. A walkthrough would be great, fruey, and we could even post it here as a tutorial for others on Mac and Windows who want a fast and painless way to get their Gmail out of Gmail and somewhere else.
    Thanks!

  31. I’d like to find the most elegant solution… so can Gmail import from a POP3 mailbox elsewhere? It would make most sense to download your mail, and then have Gmail import, since bouncing will cause a large number of messages to be sent to a single mailbox, and Gmail might filter it / block it / label your IP a spammer.
    Possibly using a combination of fetchmail & some kind of mail server like Postfix with an alias file might be better, along with finding a way to throttle the sending so that the mails arrive in batches over a period of time.
    The answer to the first question is key to how I might approach the problem :-).
    Note: I used to manage a mail server for a small ISP, so I have done this thing in various ways before, but never 10,000 mails, and often to a mailbox that I controlled (so I wouldn’t block my own resending using anti-spam rules).

  32. fruey —
    No, Gmail cannot import other accounts. You can only forward other accounts to Gmail and enable access inside Gmail to download Gmail mail via POP3.
    I agree the issue is Spamming yourself and the fact that you can only view 100 messages most at a time inside Gmail. 10,000 messages forwarded/redirected at 100 a time would take… what… a lifetime?
    😀

  33. Hi David,
    I did comply with the Internal Revenue Service’s summons because it required me to comply.
    They probably already had the information that they wanted because the courts report information about money they receive to the IRS for collection cases.
    I get a lot of 1099 forms from courthouses because I have a lot of cases all over the place. (The money reported goes to the clients and then to the firm because I receive a salary). That link only shows a few selected counties in Indiana that use that particular docket system.

  34. Hi Chris!
    What are the differences between a warrant, a summons and a subpoena?
    How do you know if a facsimile is authentic or not? Is there such a thing as a “secure send fax?”
    WOW! I love that site with all your cases! Why do you have so many entries with so many cases in each entry? Why not just one “Hedges” link with ALL your cases listed there?
    Is all your work done via the web now? Do you have to push any paper?

  35. Hi David,
    Here’s the run-down on IRS summons:

    B. The Summons Process in General
    The United States’ system of taxation relies on self-assessment and the good faith and integrity of taxpayers to disclose completely and honestly all information relevant to their tax liability. Nonetheless, “it would be naive to ignore the reality that some persons attempt to outwit the system.” United States v. Bisceglia, 420 U.S. 141, 145 (1975). Accordingly, Congress has conferred upon the Secretary of the Treasury the responsibility to make accurate determinations of tax liability and has given him broad authority to conduct investigations for that purpose. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue, as the Secretary’s delegate, is charged with the duty to make inquiries, determinations, and assessments of all taxes imposed by the Internal Revenue Code. Donaldson v. United States, 400 U.S. 517, 523-524 (1971); United States v. McAnlis, 721 F.2d 334, 336 (11th Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1227 (1984); United States v. Harris, 628 F.2d 87 5, 879 (5th Cir. 1980). Section 7601. [FN1]
    The summons power is the investigative tool provided by Congress to enable the Commissioner to discharge this investigative responsibility. Section 7602(a) and (b) of the Code authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to examine records, to issue summonses,[FN2] and to take testimony for the purposes of (1) “ascertaining the correctness of any return,” (2) “making a return where none has been made,” (3) “determining the liability of any person for any internal revenue tax * * *,” (4) “collecting any such liability,” or (5) “inquiring into any offense connected with the administration or enforcement of the internal revenue laws.” [FN3]The courts have held consistently that Section 7602 endows the IRS with expansive information-gathering authority to encourage effective tax investigations. See United States v. Arthur Young & Co., 465 U.S. 805, 813-815 (1984); La Mura v. United States, 765 F.2d 974, 979 (11th Cir. 1985); United States v. Saunders, 951 F. 2d 1065, 1067 (9th Cir. 1991); Hintze v. IRS, 879 F.2d 121, 125 (4th Cir. 1989); United States v. Balanced Financial Management, Inc., 769 F.2d 1440, 1446 (10th Cir. 1985). [FN4]

    Source: USDOJ Tax Resource Manual 55B. Emphasis added and footnotes omitted.
    Here’s a definition of subpoena from the Florida Bar:

    A subpoena is an order, issued by a court of law, which requires you to appear in person at a certain place on a certain date and time. Except as described in this recording, you have no legal choice but to appear at the place on the date and time listed on the subpoena. The subpoena may require you to go to court or to an attorney’s office to answer questions under oath about a particular case.

    A warrant allows government officials to take some sort of action.
    From Wikipedia:

    In law, a warrant can mean any form of authorization. Often in statute the warrant of a particular person is required before certain administrative actions can take place. For example, before the United States Secretary of State may affix the Great Seal of the United States to letters patent, the President must give authorization [1]. Warrant officers derive their authority from an authorization given by a defense minister as opposed to actually being an officer of the state.
    Most often, the term warrant refers to a specific type of authorization; a writ issued by a competent officer, usually a judge or magistrate, which commands an otherwise illegal act that would violate individual rights and affords the person executing the writ protection from damages if the act is performed. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits search or arrest without a warrant, unless there is a reasonable doubt to privacy.
    Warrants are typically issued by courts and are directed to the sheriff or a police officer. The warrants issued by a court normally are search warrants, arrest warrants, and execution warrants. A typical arrest warrant in the United States will take the approximate form of:
    “This Court orders the Sheriff to find the named person, wherever he may be found, and deliver said person to the custody of the Court.”

  36. Hi David,
    I knew the IRS summons was real because we’d received a notice in the mail, then I received a telephone message to call the IRS to discuss. I called the IRS office and spoke to the revenue officer who had left a message for me. I told him to send the fax to save time. I’m sure there’s a copy in the mail that was sent by certified mail with return receipt requested.
    The links in the docket system are for various courts. Within each grouping, all of the individual cases I have are listed. If you plugged in names of individuals with cases before the various courts, it is unlikely they’d have more than a few entries.
    One of these days, the courts hope to be able to do everything online. Indiana has plans to have a statewide computer system with all case information available to the public, instead of the county-by-county systems that are in place now.
    Everything right now in the state courts is paper-based.
    But, the federal bankruptcy court has gone to electronic filing.

  38. Hi David,
    I don’t know how long private companies are required to keep email, but I would assume that it will always be available to be found as long as someone can get to the actual hard drive or other device where the information was stored.
    From “Email Archiving“:

    CHICAGO — Mark Diamond, consultant with Contoural Inc., said a survey of clients showed 29% found email archiving for the long term less risky, in terms of compliance, than attempting to reduce data, while 21% thought deleting data on a regular basis was less risky. Forty-two percent answered that they are not sure.
    A convincing case for long-term retention, however, was found when Diamond offered insight into the inner workings of a lawyers mind in a presentation to Chicago’s storage networking user group Wednesday morning. …
    “Deletion policies don’t delete, they only drive underground archival and increase discovery costs,” Diamond said. “And the bad emails always seem to turn up.”

    Here’s what INC says about keeping anything tax related:

    Record keeping can be a burdensome task — it’s boring and time-consuming. And storage of records takes up space. But knowing what records to keep and for how long can save you problems down the road.
    Income tax returns. Conventional wisdom says to keep copies of income tax returns for a minimum of three years (the time during which a return can be audited). However, if the IRS suspects fraud or if it believes no return has been filed, then there is no limit on the number of years it can go back for examination. Better idea: Keep copies of tax returns indefinitely, along with proof of mailing, in order to have evidence that the returns were filed.

    New Jersey’s Supreme Court just made some rules regarding discovery of electronic documents.

    Jeffrey Greenbaum, another Civil Practice Committee member, calls the electronic discovery rules “an attempt to have some consistency and rationality in a process that has been left until now to the discretion of trial judges as they manage discovery.” The rules are also “a wake-up call to most practitioners, who have not focused on electronic-discovery issues in a very substantive way,” adds Greenbaum, of Newark’s Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross. “How many people search BlackBerrys when they do a discovery request?”
    He notes that the rules refer generally to electronically stored information without listing the various types to allow for flexibility in the face of rapidly evolving technology.

    I know the federal government has regulations for keeping all of its electronic records.
    For example, here’s a rule I located for the National Institutes of Health:

    The NIH Records Control Schedule, which is Appendix 1 to this chapter, contains specific instructions as to how long records of any given type may be kept and what must be done with them after the specified period. These instructions are legally binding. Records may not be destroyed before the authorized time, and they may not be kept for periods longer than those specified in the schedule. Records scheduled for permanent retention should be offered to the National Archives at the time specified.

  39. Great stuff, Chris, thanks!
    I remember during the Microsoft case all of MSFT’s email was subpoenaed by the court and several incriminating emails were discovered from the top people.
    At the time folks wondered why in the world MSFT would keep such correspondence around and the general consensus was companies of a certain stature are required by law to keep copies of all correspondence in case the government wants to peel back in time to piece together what happened.

  40. And, even if they don’t keep the documents, it is often possible to obtain the data from examining hard drives and backup systems.
    A good discovery request would ask to examine the computers and their systems so that forensic experts could see if they could find anything relevant to the discovery requests.
    Also, if you’re ordered to keep data, don’t ever destroy it.
    From Information Week:

    Keeping e-mail around on PCs, servers, and backup tapes gets companies into trouble. During the investigation of fraud at Enron in 2003, 1.5 million internal messages from 176 employees showed up online, exacerbating the embattled company’s problems.
    Conversely, Philip Morris was slapped with a $2.7 million fine two years ago after it accidentally destroyed e-mails related to a lawsuit. Investment banker Laura Zubalake, fired by UBS Warburg in 2001, came away with $29 million in a sexual discrimination case, partially because the judge instructed the jury that it could infer that e-mails lost and destroyed in defiance of a court order would have been unfavorable to Zubalake’s former employer.
    The most severe punishments have come after intentional destruction of data. …
    Kumar and Richards broke a cardinal rule of data deletion: If you’re aware of a claim against the business, relevant information must be retained. Otherwise, companies can be liable for spoliation–legalese for destruction of evidence. “That’s where we see most people screwing up,” Overly says. “However, in the majority of instances, it hasn’t been someone saying, ‘Let’s write over that as quickly as possible.’ It’s, ‘Oh my God, Bob in retention has written over a tape we needed.'”

  41. Hi David,
    Here’s some more information about record keeping requirements from the Information Week article. Link in previous post. I don’t know much about this area, so seek out competent legal advice if you have questions.

    Data deletion is only a piece of the bigger data management picture, where an increasing number of laws and regulations require companies to keep all sorts of data.
    Payroll records can go to the rubbish bin only after somewhere between three and seven years, depending on the company and relevant law.
    Medical records sometimes must be kept until two years after a patient’s death.
    The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires accounting firms that audit public companies to keep related documents for seven years after the audit.

  42. Wonderful Chris, thanks!
    I thought companies were legally required to keep all electronic correspondence forever. Now it seems like you don’t have to, but most companies do anyway. Wild!

  43. David
    I’m not going to reinvent the wheel, there’s a web page here that you can use for general info, and shows that OSX already has what you need.
    http://homepage.mac.com/bighouse/fetchmail.html
    Do step one, step two, and step three (configure with a different POP3 account for testing if you can). Ignore step four.
    I hope this part doesn’t get broken
    For procmail to forward mail (bounce it) you just need the following in the .procmailrc file (replacing the line :0:)
    :0c # That’s colon, zero, lowercase cee
    ! self@other-place.net # That’s exclamation mark, address to forward to
    And that should do it. Let me know if you need more detail.
    -Fruey

  45. I used to do that kind of thing in under an hour… but if you’re not familiar with unix in a big way, it can take a while to work it out.
    The PINE method would be less complicated if only it supported POP3 out of the box, it really would then just be a set of keystrokes. You’d need at least the fetchmail part (on that page) to then use PINE to do the work.
    Due to the sensitive nature of email and security issues, I can’t really volunteer to do this for you on my server, but the thought is there.
    -Fruey

  48. Hi David,
    There may be some computer savvy former Congressional pages who will be needing work when that program is shut down for the sins of Congressmen Gerry Studds, Dan Crane, and Mark Foley. They can spend their days forwarding email for college credit.
    Notice that there aren’t any Congresswomen implicated?
    Debra Lafave is from Florida. I wonder if she’ll be running for Congress any time soon.
    :mrgreen:

  50. The combination of Members of Congress and trained monkeys would be dangerous, especially if there were instant messages being exchanged. The two groups would have to be leery of any cats that might be hanging around recording all of the events to release to the media. 😉

  54. UPDATE:
    I have decided something maniacal is going on — Gmail doesn’t want to ever give you your email!
    What’s is that about and why is there no easy way to pull your email out of there?
    IMAP support would help.
    Merging accounts would help.
    No help is available.

  56. Hi Chris —
    That’s a user who can’t get mail from Gmail any longer.
    I need to move 10,000 messages.
    There currently is no non-sloppy way to do that.

  58. Here’s a warning from the above listed extension’s author:

    BE GENTLE WITH THE PROGRAM. DO NOT UPLOAD OR DOWNLOAD MANY FILES IN A SINGLE DAY. YOU MAY GET YOUR ACCOUNT BLOCKED FOR 24 HOURS. I GUESS, IT HAPPENS WHEN YOU UPLOAD OR DOWNLOAD MORE THAN 1 GB DATA IN A SINGLE DAY.

    It’s in ALL CAPS! :O

  59. Chris!
    Yes, that program violates your Gmail agreement. Folks use that program anyway to store files — instead of email — in their 2 gigs of Gmail space.
    Google only wants email there — and that’s why they keep it and don’t let you use IMAP — because they want your eyes on their Ads. If you can use IMAP you wouldn’t really need to login to your account much to see all those precious Ads!
    😀

  60. I can’t blame Google as I make money displaying their ads on my sites.
    It’s too bad there isn’t some form of customer support. Maybe, they’ll enhance their new version if enough people ask. It would be allowing a lateral move, so the ad viewing potential wouldn’t change.

  61. Hi Chris —
    Yes, I understand Ads need eyes — AND CLICKS — to find success.
    I, too, wish Gmail were out of beta so one could find official tech support.

  62. It’s interesting because I’m running the ads, but I use the Adblock plug-in when I view websites, including my own.
    I don’t ever want to click on my own ad — or even have my impressions counted when I inspect the site to make sure it’s working properly — so the plug-in works great for me as a purveyor of fine advertising of products that will make my readers’ lives better, happier, and more successful.
    :mrgreen:

  64. Rather late and not sure if I’m missing something obvious or if someone mentioned this before, but this should be possible with filters.
    1) Create a new Filter (Settings > Filters > Create a new Filter).
    2) In the from field, type * (this matches all email received, AFAIK)
    3) Click Next Step
    4) Select “Forward it to:” yournewaddress
    5) Make sure you choose “Also apply filter to 10,000 conversations below”
    6) Click Create Filter
    That should do it, I tried out all steps save #6 and it seemed to be on track.
    What will the receiving account do when it receives 10K emails at a time? I have no idea 🙂 Maybe you can create filters with from fields like “a*” or “a* | b* | c*” and do it in alphabetical groups.

  65. Welcome to Urban Semiotic, Brian! I thank you for your fine messsage. How long does it take for Gmail to queue up and send 10,000 messages? Are the timestamps preserved?

  66. David, When I actually tried doing this, I noticed rather small text saying “Note: Old mail will not be forwarded” – this means my proposed solution is kaput. That means you could do everything to the old mail (like delete it or tag it) but not forward it. 🙁
    Another solution is now possible, since gmail allows you to pop email off other POP3 accounts (been under a month since they added this capability).
    So, here goes take 2:
    1) In your old account, go to Settings > Forwarding and POP and select “Enable POP for *All* mail”.
    2) In your new account, go to Settings > Accounts and Select “Add another mail account” in the “Get mail from other accounts” section. Specify the Gmail POP3 details and use the credentials of your old account.
    You might want to have a look at the other settings while performing the above steps, I think you should certainly tag incoming email with “old” or something similar so you can easily get a list of email from the old account. The timestamps should certainly be preserved when you use this option.
    Hope this works 🙂

  67. Excellent, Brian!
    I’ve been waiting for Mail Fetcher to be enabled on my account and I’ve been looking in the wrong place. Thanks for the pointer to where it was hiding! I wonder how long it has been there?
    Now… if you have an email address you’re currently forwarding to your Gmail account — would you turn off that forward and just enable POP3 for that account or not?
    How often does the Gmail POP3 “client” poll for new mail?
    I wonder if a forward gets you new mail faster?

  68. Glad you found it – did you get all 10K emails in the new account then or had you already done it using some other technique?
    I think GMail polls every 2 minutes. I wish there was a way in which I could tell it to pop mail off the other account when I initiate a pop request off this one – I don’t mind the extra wait, but I don’t think that’s what happens, unfortunately. I’ve been looking for documentation on this, but couldn’t find any
    I’d say forwarding would definitely be more reliable, faster and in some ways more “correct”. If that’s working for you now, stick with it 🙂

  69. Hi Brian —
    I can’t get Gmail to POP3 Gmail, can you? Grr! Here’s how I moved all my email:
    http://urbansemiotic.com/?s=my+own+monkey
    I can understand how a “Check Now” button would be necessary for checking some POP3 email addresses!
    I think you’re right about forwarding — especially if the other mail server/system is wonky — forwarded mail never touches their servers at all and comes straight over. Huzzah!

  70. Hey David,
    I must admit I haven’t tried POPping Gmail from Gmail. If it does not work, then they might have added a special rule to disallow this capability for whatever reason…because I have popped successfully from other accounts.
    Your other technique seems like a ton of work, but necessary, unfortunately 🙂
    I just realized I got here looking for additional information on Gmail’s POP3 features myself 🙂 I really wish it would POP on demand 🙂

  71. Brian —
    I could not get Google Apps to POP3 my Gmail account. That was a big disappointment. I do understand why they block that feature, though. They don’t want you closing or merging your current Gmail account. They want you to keep two separate accounts running.
    The other technique did work but it was torturous. Glad I won’t ever have to do that again! SMILE!
    Ha! I’m so glad you found us! I agree a “POP NOW!” button would be a great and welcome help.

  73. I came across this when I was trying to work out how to do this myself.
    Here is the method I came up with, I used select all option, then went to more options create filter, then created a filter based on incoming email addresses there was only about 15 possible ones, I then set this filter to forward to a different email address.
    Last option of the filter dialog is to select if you want to run it on your current messages select yes, and in my case 4,000 emails where forwarded automatically in about an hour.
    NICE…

  75. Pingback: I am My Own Trained Monkey: Getting the Gmail Out! | Urban Semiotic

Comments are closed.