This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

How to migrate gmail-folders to other imap provider without duplicating emails?

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by Matt

fred116
fred116
more options

Dear community,

I have been using Thunderbird for many years and simply love it. (Now running v. 91.9.0, 64-bit for Mac-OS monterey v. 12.3.1).

After having used G-suite gmail with my own domain name for years as well, I am now forced to upgrade to a google business offering or take my domain name email somewhere else :-(

So I signed up for an alternative provider, and have copied a couple of folders to the new email-account using Thunderbird. This works like a charm, but what happens when I copy over the AllMail folder? I believe I will then duplicate all the emails copied from the folders?

Is there a smart way of migrating from gmail to another imap-provider using Thunderbird which will take into account google obscure way of labelling emails? Or is there another way of migrating away from gmail?

Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks, Fred Gjoertz.

Dear community, I have been using Thunderbird for many years and simply love it. (Now running v. 91.9.0, 64-bit for Mac-OS monterey v. 12.3.1). After having used G-suite gmail with my own domain name for years as well, I am now forced to upgrade to a google business offering or take my domain name email somewhere else :-( So I signed up for an alternative provider, and have copied a couple of folders to the new email-account using Thunderbird. This works like a charm, but what happens when I copy over the AllMail folder? I believe I will then duplicate all the emails copied from the folders? Is there a smart way of migrating from gmail to another imap-provider using Thunderbird which will take into account google obscure way of labelling emails? Or is there another way of migrating away from gmail? Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks, Fred Gjoertz.

All Replies (4)

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

I suggest you keep doing what you're doing: copying the folders you need. You then don't need the Allmail folder.

fred116
fred116 Question owner
more options

Hi David,

thanks for replying. As not all the emails are in folders and I want to have access to allmail as an archive, your suggestion would not be an ideal solution for my challenge.

br, Fred.

fred116
fred116 Question owner
more options

I have experimented with Google takeout in order to see if this could be a solution to my challenge. However, google takeout creates an inbox which includes all the replies sent - and contains almost twice the amount of emails as my original inbox.

On another note, I will try to copy all the folders (using Thunderbird) and thereafter run the extension "remove duplicate messages" (https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/removedupes/). This may very well be the solution.

Matt
Matt
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Who is your new provider? most of them offer some form of IMAP transfer or import. Google certainly offer a takeout service that provides the contents of the account as a series of mbox files. Perhaps you new provider offer a way to import those to the server if the do not offer something more robust.

While there is a cottage industry of migrating mail from account to account with a mail client, it is slow, buggy and prone to error. Data loss is not uncommon.