I have an old gmail account with a whole ton of old conversations but I scrapped it a new one about a year ago. I know that google will probably delete the account after around nine months of inactivity but I want to keep the old emails. Is there a way to transfer them all to my new account just as they are? If anyone has the answer to this I would like to hear from you. :) |
Sadly, I don't think this is possible. The only way I can think of is to forward each message individually. Not ideal because it will take ages, they'll all be sent from you and the dates will be messed up, but at least the content will be there for you to search on...
I don't think you can even choose to download them via POP once they've been read, can you? Otherwise you could just download all of them and wait (perhaps forever!) for Google to build in some functionality to import a mail archive.
Of course, you could also set a reminder for yourself and just sign in to your old account every now and again so that you don't lose your emails... |
Do you have your old emails in Outlook or Thunderbird? If you have your emails in Thunderbird, you can use Mail Redirect to move them to your new inbox. https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/550/ |
what about Switching to Gmail?
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=switchguide.html&switch=1
it wasnt made for transferring Gmail to Gmail.. but it might work.. dont you think Tony? :/ |
I think most of them are saved (thankfully) on my Mac's HD. I have them in an old version of Apple Mail.
I am not sure I have all of them though, and the whole idea of the "conversation" was lost when they saved with POP.
I won't lose all of my mail if they delete the address, but right now, it would help to be able to have them in Gmail instead of Apple Mail because I like the Gmail inteface much more (lables instead of folders, better searching, ability to access from any computer etc.) |
One thing to consider.
Set up a new mail client (Apple Mail?) so that it hasn't 'spoken' to GMail before, then setup a rule to 'Redirect' (not forward!) all mail it receives to your new GMail address.
Then connect it to GMail making sure to choose the 'download all messages' and 'leave messages on server'.
All your previously received emails should then get sent to your new address as though that was the original recipient.
By being redirected you should keep your conversations. That said, sent messages might be more difficult, GMail's POP3 will download them for you, but the correct redirection could be tricky. |
Set up a POP server and then mark all your mail as read. Viola. |
Yes, I like Reto Meier's idea. I think I'll try that, but I still need something to help me gather all of my sent mail or replies into my new account... |