Gmail to Gmail Migration in Maricopa
Today was go live day for Google Guides at GCC. We are switching our email from an archaic MEMO system to shiny new Gmail. All I can say is finally. I’ve been using Gmail for at least 5 years both with a Gmail address and my own domains (freshmancomp.com), so I’m very familiar with the perks. So I’ve been waiting for this moment.
My excitement was dampened a bit when the first thing I tried to do didn’t work. What? All I wanted to do was get all of my emails, folders and filters from my existing Gmail account moved over to my new Gmail account. Can’t be that difficult, right? Well, actually it’s not, but I just couldn’t get it to work.
I found instructions for moving from Gmail to Gmail here: http://www.twistermc.
- Download Thunderbird and set up both the Gmail account and the work Gmail account in it.
- Both accounts would then show in Tbird and then you can just drag folders from one to the other – Easy Peasy.
- The work Gmail account kept giving me an error when I tried to set it up. It said that either my username or password was incorrect. I tried both the alisa.cooper and MEID at the beginning of the email address AND I reset my password in PAT to the same thing and it said it was synchronized in MEMO.
- I also made sure both accounts had the IMAP option turned on in Gmail.
I was stumped, so I kept playing around with it, asked everyone I knew on Twitter, Facebook and CyberSalon if they had a solution. I even called the Helpdesk. Nothing.
In the mean time, I paid yippiemove.com to do the migration for me, but I still wanted to find the answer to the problem. Not everyone is going to be willing to pay $15 to have it done for them, even if it worked great. So after a few more inquires, one of my CyberSalon pals pointed me to the MCC wiki and I found this article: Google Apps – Setting Up Thunderbird on Mac.
The information provided here was much different than the basic directions found elsewhere. The main difference was the need to input both the First.LastName and the MEID parts of the email address in the setup process. Also I had to really change my password first. Doh! Previously I had just updated it by inputting the same password in the PAT tool. Not sure if that worked, but the settings below did after I changed it.
Make sure everything matches what I have entered above and it should work.
If you want to move your filters too, you will need to do this separately, as IMAP doesn’t import/export filters. Just export/import them right in Gmail. That worked flawlessly as well. Don’t forget to turn on “Import Filters” in Labs first. Here’s how to do it.
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So this is how you migrated your individual gmail over to GC mail Gmail? (thank God memo is almost gone!!) This sounds like a good idea, but how will you keep student mail separate from GC mail? (Is there a way to do this?) I’ve been using Gmail for years too, but I don’t want to get bogged down having to pick through my email trying to keep to stuff separate. Thanks for any tips/advice.
Yes, you will get your GCC Gmail on August 6th. If you need any help migrating, let me know.
Oops! Only saw the first sentence of your comment. I still have a separate Gmail for my students; however, I’m considering merging them back into one now that we have Gmail for our work address. What I do is create filters and labels. Students will be using the @maricopa.edu (if you train them), so you can make a filter for all @maricopa.edu emails to go into a label (folder). You can even color code it red or something. I have all my students fill out a form in the beginning and ask for both personal and school emails. I then export that data into a CVS file and import it back into my Gmail making a contact group for each class. Each class gets its on color and label. I can show you how to do this.
OK, now I am confused! At MCC I thought our MCC email already migrated over, but not MEMO…am I backwards?
I am not even going to pretend like I know what you all did over at MCC. I’m a bit confused myself. All I know is I have Gmail and my address isn’t what it’s supposed to be yet, but I have Gmail, and it works. 🙂
Thanks for posting your settings for Thunderbird. You saved me a lot of frustration!
Cheers!