Need to migrate your emails from your current provider to Gmail or from Gmail to another provider? In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through 5 easy steps for transferring email to Gmail.
We’ll explain how to setup your Gmail account in order to receive or provide your email data and explain how easy a G Suite email migration or migration from / to Gmail / Google Workspace / G Suite can be accomplished. Let’s get started!
G Suite email migration: Easily migrate emails to Gmail in a few steps
Step 01:
Get ready for your G Suite email migration
In order to migrate email to Gmail (or vice versa), you first need to have a few things at hand:- the credentials for your existing account (username, password and name of your mailserver)
- the credentials for your new account
- and of course MailJerry – your handy email migration tool for transferring email to Gmail 😉
How to get the credentials for your account:
Usually, when signing up with a hosting provider, you receive your credentials via email or as a data sheet. As we all know, such things get lost easily, so first advice is to sign in to your hosting providers customer center and look for your credentials there. For large hosting providers, a quick google search for “name of your hosting provider credentials” might help to find out where to get the credentials for your email account.
➡️ If you still haven’t found your credentials, contact the support of your hosting provider.
Credentials for your Gmail email account:
When transferring email from Gmail or to Gmail, you can use the following credentials for account:
Username: your email address (e.g. myname@gmail.com)
Server: imap.gmail.com
Don’t know the name of your mailserver?
Open the MailJerry email migration software, go to Migrations and enter your email address (yourname@domain.tdl) in the field “username” as well as your password in the “password” field. With the given email address, we can draw conclusions about your hosting provider and very likely suggest the correct server name or, at least, are able to guess the most likely name.
In case your username differs from your email address, don’t forget to change the value in the username field back to the username given by your provider.
Guess your username
Got the name of your mail server, but don’t know the username? Try these common variations and see if MailJerry is able to connect with your email account:
Common username variations:
- your email address (e.g. firstname.lastname@domain.tdl)
- the part before the @ sign (e.g. firstname.lastname)
Now that you’ve got the credentials for your accounts, you can start to generate an app password in order to start transferring email to Gmail or from Gmail / Google Workspace / G Suite to another provider!
Step 02:
Generate Gmail app password to migrate email to Gmail (or vice versa)
To be able to migrate your emails to or from Gmail, you first need to generate an app password. Keep on reading to find out why or go directly to the how to tutorial.
What is an app password?
An app password is a 16-digit passcode that is generated for your Gmail account. With the app password, you grant non-Google apps or devices permission to access your account. For example, if you use an email client like Outlook or Apple Mail or if you have configured your email on your smart phone, it is very likely that you were already required to generate an app password.
Why must I use an app password?
The app password is an extra security precaution that is required by Google. It helps to keep your data 100% save and within your control.
Why can’t I choose “Log in with Google” instead?
For our email migration tool, we’ve compared both connection methods: While “Log in with Google” tends to experience connection delays and interruptions, Gmail / G Suite email migration with app password runs smoothly and without any problems.
Since we don’t want our users to experience any inconveniences when transferring email to Gmail, we decided to only work with the app password option for Gmail / G Suite email migration. So let’s quickly generate your app password!
How to generate an app password for your G Suite email migration
1. Login to your Gmail account at https://www.gmail.com/
2. Click on the account icon (your profile picture) in the toolbar and choose Manage your Google Account
3. In the left navigation bar, select Security
4. Scroll down to “How you sign in to Google” and ensure that 2-Step Verification is turned to On.
5. If 2-Step Verification is active, click on 2-Step Verification (or the arrow at the right end of the option).
6. Scroll down to “App passwords” and click on it.
Don’t see the option “App passwords”?
Follow this link to create an app password: https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords
7. Create your app password by providing the following information: Enter MailJerry in the field “App name” and click on “Create”.
8. Google now displays your app password. Copy your password and save it in order to use it later for transferring email to Gmail or email data from Gmail to another email provider.
Step 03:
Enable IMAP access to your Gmail account
Now that you’ve got an app password for your G Suite email migration, you need to enable IMAP for your Gmail account.
Why do I have to enable IMAP for transferring email to Gmail?
If you enable IMAP for your Gmail / G Suite email migration, your emails can be accessed by an email migration tools like MailJerry. Without IMAP, your email data can only be accessed within Gmail, which will make it impossible to migrate email from Gmail to another provider.
How to enable IMAP access to your Gmail account:
1. Log in to your Gmail account: https://mail.google.com
2. Click on the Settings icon on the top right corner and select See all settings
3. Now click on Forwarding and POP/IMAP (last link on the right under “Settings”) and select enable IMAP.
Scroll to the end of the page and click on Save settings.
Repeat steps 2 and 3 for every Gmail account you wish to use in your G Suite email migration!
Step 04:
Start to migrate email to Gmail or from Gmail to another provide
Now that you’ve got your credentials at hand and your Gmail accounts set up, you can start transferring email to Gmail or from Gmail to another provider:
1. Download and install the MailJerry email migration tool for Windows, Mac OS, iOS or Android or start your migration directly in the browser.
2. Go to Migrations and enter the credentials for both email addresses. For the Gmail address, select Gmail as account type and enter your email address and your app password.
IMPORTANT: For your Gmail account, enter your app password instead of your login password in the “password” field.
3. Click on Check Settings and wait until MailJerry connected with both of your accounts. In case something is still not set up correctly, MailJerry will show an error message.
But don’t worry, the email migration software provides you with detailed instructions on how to easily resolve any problems.
4. After MailJerry connected with your accounts, you’ll see a summary of your Gmail / G Suite email migration. The software will tell you how many emails and folders where found in your existing account and warn you in case you don’t have enough disk space in your new account.
5. Now click on Start Your Migration. The duration to migrate email to Gmail heavily depends on the speed provided by the Google servers and the amount of data that is being migrated.
Of course, Google does not like to lose customers, so they slow down the transmission speed after a certain amount of data has been migrated. But don’t worry if you migrate large email accounts from or to Gmail. You can close the MailJerry software and check back later, as MailJerry will handle your email migration completely automatically from now on!
In case you’ve got any further questions when transferring email to Gmail or from G Suite to another provider, have a look at our FAQs!
Step 05:
Done! What to do after the Gmail / G Suite email migration
Congratulations, you’ve just completed transferring email to Gmail or from Gmail to another account! So what’s next?
Sync your accounts after the Gmail / G Suite email migration
After successfully transferring email to Gmail (or vice versa), it is very likely that you will still receive a few emails in your old email account.
Therefore, go to Overview, select your migration and activate Automatically synchronize emails. Now all emails received in your old account will be forwarded to your new account.
🎉 That’s it! 🎉
As promised, transferring email to Gmail is very easy and can be accomplished in a few steps!
