There are many good reasons you might want to transfer your emails from Outlook to Gmail: More suitable pricing options, higher flexibility (e.g. when it comes to choosing your domain registrar), more storage space, or perhaps you simply prefer G Suite over Office 365. However: When making the switch to Gmail, you might wonder: “How do I transfer my emails from Outlook to Gmail?”
Given the wide range of tutorials available, it’ easy to get confused when trying to find the best method that suits your requirements. Therefore, we’ve created this tried and tested tutorial. It’s based on our experience of performing more than 1,000 email migrations daily.
In the following, we’ll explain how to transfer your emails from Outlook to Gmail with the help of the email migration tool MailJerry. And in case you’re interested in other methods to transfer your emails, have a look at this comparison.
Advantages of this tutorial:
✅ Cloud migration to Gmail – no need to upload / download your email data
✅ Use your emails as usual during the migration – no service interruption
✅ Automatically forward new emails to Gmail (no forwarding rules required)
✅ Migrate not only emails, but also folders, labels, drafts, sent objects…
✅ Preserves the read status of your emails
✅ Auto-duplicate detection to prevent chaos in your Gmail account
Summary (tl;dr):
To transfer emails from Outlook to Gmail, you need to:
- Create your Gmail account, enable IMAP for Gmail and create an app password.
- Connect with Outlook (via oAuth) or enter your email credentials.
- Connect with Gmail using your app password.
- Start the transfer from Outlook to Gmail.
After the transfer:
- Activate the mailbox sync to keep the Gmail account synchronised.
- Import contacts & inform them about your new email address
Basically, that’s it. For more detailed information, keep on reading!
Outlook / Outlook.com: What’s the difference?
Outlook.com (also called “Outlook on the Web”) is Microsoft’s email service.
➡️ It is responsible for receiving, sending and managing your email communication. In most cases, your Outlook.com email address ends with @outlook.com (e.g. mailjerry@outlook.com), but you can also use a custom domain (e.g. mailjerry@mailjerry.com).
The Outlook app is the desktop or mobile email client created by Microsoft.
➡️ It allows you to manage your email communication directly in the application. You can add your Outlook.com or any other email address to Outlook (e.g. your Gmail or Yahoo! address).
No matter if you’re using Outlook.com or simply wish to transfer emails from your account in the Outlook app to Gmail, this tutorial works for both use cases!
✅ No matter if you’re using Outlook.com or simply wish to transfer emails from your account in the Outlook app to Gmail, this tutorial works for both use cases!
Step 01: Preparation & Setup
Before you start to transfer your emails from Outlook to Gmail, there are a few quick things you need to set up.
Here’s what you need to do:
Create a Gmail Account
In case your Gmail account does not already exist, sign up with Gmail and create your new account.
Open this link and click on Create account. Now follow the steps on the screen to create your new email address with Gmail.
Generate an App Password for Gmail
For the transfer from Outlook to Gmail, you need an app password, that is created with a few simple steps:
1. Log in to your Gmail account, click on your Profile Picture and select Manage your Google Account.
2. In the left navigation, click on Security and scroll down to How you sign in to Google.
3. Ensure that 2-Step Verification is set to On.
4. Now click on 2-Step Verification (or the arrow on the right from the 2-step-verification status).
5. On the 2-Step-Verification page, scroll down to App passwords and click on it.
In case you do not see the option “App passwords”, open this link: https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords
6. Enter MailJerry in the field App name and click on Create.
7. Google will now show your app password. Copy the password – you’ll need it in a few seconds in order to transfer your emails from Outlook to Gmail!
Ensure that IMAP is enabled
ℹ️ If you created your Gmail account just recently, you can skip this step as IMAP is automatically enabled for all new Gmail accounts.
For your email transfer from Gmail to Outlook to work, you need to make sure that IMAP is enabled for your Gmail account:
1. Go to your Gmail inbox, click on the Settings icon (2nd left from your profile picture) and click on See all settings.
2. Click on Forwarding and POP / IMAP (on the far right below the headline “Settings”).
3. Scroll down to IMAP access and ensure that the option Enable IMAP is active.
That’s it, now your Gmail account is ready to receive your emails from Outlook!
For Users of the Outlook Email Client
If you wish to transfer your emails from the Outlook email client to Gmail, you need to find out if your current email account is configured as IMAP or POP3 account:
1. In the Outlook app, open the File menu in the top left corner and click on Account Information.
2. Select your account in the dropdown and click on Server Settings.
3. A new overlay opens.
For IMAP accounts: If it says “IMAP Account Settings” in the overlay, you’re good to go.
Copy the address in the field Server for further reference.
For POP accounts: In case your account is configured as POP3 account (“POP Account Settings”), make sure that under Mail settings, the option Leave a copy of messages on the server is enabled and Remove from server after … days is disabled.
➡️ In case the mail settings of your POP account differ from the settings stated above, have a look at the FAQ.
Now it’s time to actually transfer your email data to your Gmail account!
Step 02: Transfer Emails from Outlook to Gmail
After you’ve completed the preparation, you can start to transfer your emails from Outlook / Outlook.com to Gmail. Here’s how it works:
1. Download the MailJerry email migration tool or open MailJerry in your browser.
2. After you opened MailJerry, register with your email address and click on New Migration.
Enter your Outlook / Outlook.com credentials
In the section Existing Address, enter the following credentials:
For Outlook.com users:
a) Select Microsoft / Office 365 as account type.
b) Enter your email address in the field username.
c) Click on Connect with Microsoft Account.
d) In the pop-up that opens, enter your password and connect with your Outlook.com account.
For users of the Outlook email client:
a) Select the account type suited for your email account.
For most providers, this is IMAP. When hosting your emails with Yahoo!, Gmail or Microsoft, select the corresponding provider in the dropdown.
b) Enter your username. Usually, this is your email address.
c) Enter the address of your mailserver.
This is the server address you copied a few minutes earlier when checking your Outlook email settings. In case you didn’t check Outlook, simply add the server address for incoming emails.
Connect with your Gmail account
1. In the section New Address, select Gmail as account type.
2. Enter your email address in the field username.
3. Enter your app password.
4. Check your settings by clicking on Check Settings.
➡️ MailJerry will now verify that a connection to both of your accounts is possible. Furthermore, the software will check if both accounts are ready to transfer your emails. For large mailboxes, this process might take some time. As soon as the mailbox check finished, you’ll be forwarded to the summary.
Review your Transfer from Outlook to Gmail
On the summary page, you can now review your transfer to Gmail. MailJerry will show you how many emails and folders were found in your Outlook / Outlook.com account and inform you in case any problems with your Gmail account occurred.
Pro-Tip: In the settings, activate the option Synchronize Emails for 10 Days. This ensures that emails received in your old account will automatically be forwarded to Gmail.
Star the Transfer from Outlook to Gmail
1. As soon as everything is good to go, click on Start Your Migration.
2. MailJerry will now transfer all your emails, folders, sent objects, drafts, labels… to Gmail.
Lean back and wait until your transfer to Gmail is complete. Or use your Outlook / Outlook.com account in the meantime as usual!
✅ Thanks to the backup mode, you do not need to create complicated forwarding rules in Outlook / Outlook.com. The backup mode ensures that you won’t loose any emails, even if they are received in your old email account a long time after the initial transfer from Outlook to Gmail.
Thank you so much for providing such an amazing tool. I was looking into doing this with another software that would've taken me forever to learn and do but with MailJerry, my email migration was a lot easier!"
Step 03: After the Transfer from Outlook to Gmail
After you successfully transferred your emails & folders from Outlook to Gmail, you might want to keep your accounts synced, create a backup of your old account or import your contact to Gmail. In this case, proceed as follows:
Keep your Account Synced
MailJerry can automatically forward all emails received in your old Outlook / Outlook.com account to your new Gmail account. This helps you to easily handle emails that are still sent to your old mailbox.
If you haven’t already activated the mailbox sync during the transfer, you can activate the sync now:
1. Go to the Overview and click on your migration to open the details page.
2. Scroll down to options: Here, activate the toggle Automatically synchronize emails for 10 days.
Your emails will now automatically be transferred to Gmail!
➡️ Do you want to keep your accounts synced for more than 10 days? In this case, use the backup mode!
Enable the Backup Mode
If you wish to automatically forward emails received in your Outlook / Outlook.com account to your Gmail account for more than 10 days, the Backup Mode is what you’re looking for:
1. In the options panel on the migration details page, click on Backup Mode
2. Activate the option Permanently Sync Emails to Target Mailbox
3. Set the interval: You can automatically sync your emails to Gmail daily, weekly or monthly.
✅ Thanks to the backup mode, you do not need to create complicated forwarding rules in Outlook / Outlook.com. The backup mode ensures that you won’t loose any emails, even if they are received in your old email account a long time after the initial transfer from Outlook to Gmail.
Import Contacts to Gmail
When switching from Outlook to Gmail, you might want to transfer your contacts as well. Fortunately, this is a very easy process:
Export contacts from Outlook.com or Outlook:
1. Open Outlook.com at https://outlook.live.com (for Outlook.com users) or open your Outlook email client (for Outlook users).
2. In the left sidebar, click on People
3. In the people section, click on the button Manage contacts (top right corner) and select Export contacts.
4. You can now choose to export all contacts or only certain categories. Usually, All contacts is the option to go for.
5. Click on Export. A CSV file containing all your contacts will be downloaded to your device.
ℹ️ If you’re still using the Classic Outlook version of the Outlook email client, click here for a tutorial on how to export your contacts.
Import contacts to Gmail:
After you exported your contacts as CSV file, it’s time to import them to Gmail:
1. Open https://contacts.google.com and sign in with your account.
2. In the left sidebar, click on Import
3. In the overlay, click on Select file and select the CSV file you just downloaded.
If you wish to, you can add a label for the contacts you’re about to import.
4. Now click on Import.
➡️ Your Outlook / Outlook.com contacts are now available in your Gmail account!
Inform your Contacts & Delete your Old Account:
After you finished to transfer your emails from Outlook to Gmail, you certainly want to inform your contacts about your new email address.
To easily do so, we’ve created this convenient email template you can use!
After some time, you won’t need your old email / Outlook.com account anymore. For privacy and data integrity reasons, it is a good idea to close your old, inactive account.
Close your Outlook.com account:
For Outlook.com accounts, click here to close your account permanently.
‼️ But watch out: If your account is connected with Xbox, Skype, OneDrive, or any other Microsoft service, you’ll loose access to those services by closing your account.
Delete your account in the Outlook email client:
When using the Outlook email client, you should first remove the account connected in Outlook, next, you can contact your hosting provider and ask them do delete your data. Here’s how disconnecting your account in Outlook works:
1. Go to Settings > Sync email.
2. Go to the section Manage your connected accounts.
3. In the list of connected accounts, point your mouse on the account you wish to remove.
4. Click on Delete
5. Now scroll down and click on Save to save your changes.
ℹ️ From this time on, your email account will no longer appear in your Outlook email client. However, your email account still exists on the servers of the email provider you signed up with. To permanently delete your old email account and all associated data, contact your hosting provider and ask them to delete / provide instructions on how to permanently delete your email account.
Bonus: Alternative Methods to Transfer Emails from Outlook to Gmail
There are, of course, alternative methods to transfer your emails from Outlook to Gmail. So in case you do not wish to try MailJerry for the transfer, have a look at the following alternatives:
Gmail Import Tool
The Gmail Import Tool is a free tool provided by Google that is designed to help you transfer your emails from an existing account to Gmail. It provides basic functionality and works good for small mailboxes. However, users reported that the tool does not work very well for large mailboxes and can be quite unreliable. Therefore, for larger mailboxes and / or important emails, there are better options available.
Advantages compared to MailJerry:
✅ free of charge
✅ imports contacts in one go
Disadvantages compared to MailJerry:
⛔️ very slow
⛔️ does not work very well for large mailboxes
⛔️ only basic functionality
⛔️ does not work with Exchange accounts
⛔️ can lead to duplicates / corrupted mailbox data
Export / Import using the Outlook App
Especially for Outlook users, it might seem tempting to transfer your emails from your old account to Gmail directly in the Outlook email client. In our experience, this method works okay for small accounts. But especially with large (or many) email accounts, exporting and importing email data directly in Outlook easily leads to data chaos and lost emails.
Advantages compared to MailJerry:
✅ free of charge
✅ allows to only export selected folders / subfolders
Disadvantages compared to MailJerry:
⛔️ requires to download your email data to your device first
⛔️ upload to Gmail affects your bandwidth and might take very long
⛔️ you need to manually fix your Gmail account in case something goes wrong during the upload
⛔️ you cannot use your email account during the transfer
Summary: Popular Methods Compared
| Feature | Gmail Tool | Outlook Import / Export | MailJerry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed | ⛔️ slow | ⛔ slow | ✅ fast |
| Reliability | ⛔️ weak for large mailboxes | ⛔️ weak (crashes easily) | ✅ high |
| Use email account during transfer | ⚠️ not recommended | ⛔ not possible | ✅ |
| Transfer emails, folders, labels… | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Run simultaneous transfers | ⛔ | ⛔ | ✅ |
| Keep account synced after the transfer | ✅ | ⛔ | ✅ |
| Cloud migration (no data download) | ✅ | ⛔ | ✅ |
| Duplicate detection | ⛔ | ⛔ | ✅ |
| Works with POP3 | ⚠️ when emails are stored on the server | ✅ | ⚠️ when emails are stored on the server |
| Import contacts | ✅ | ⚠️ export / import in a second step | ⚠️ import in a second step (see tutorial) |
➡️ Given the downsides of these popular alternatives, you might want to give MailJerry a try. 😉 And we’ve got good news for you: You can migrate mailboxes up to 250 MB completely free of charge. For larger mailboxes, we offer a very affordable monthly subscription that comes without any mailbox or data limitations and can be cancelled any time!
FAQFrequent Questions & Troubleshooting
For any questions and problems that might occur while transferring your emails from Outlook to Gmail, have a look at the following FAQs:
Can I use my email account during the transfer?
Yes, that’s no problem. Simply activate the mailbox sync so that changes made to your Outlook account during the transfer are reflected in your Gmail account as well.
What does the option “Ignore Google Bandwidth Limits” do?
When transferring large amounts of data to Gmail, Google throttles the bandwidth limit to its servers after a certain data volume. As soon as this happens, the transfer from Outlook to Gmail takes very, very long. This even applies to Googles own Gmail import tool.
Because of this, we provide the option to ignore the Google bandwidth limitations. If you activate this option, MailJerry will try to transfer your emails as fast as possible, allowing for an up to 80% faster email transfer.
My email account is set to POP3. How do I transfer my emails from Outlook to Gmail?
In case a copy of your emails is still stored on your mail server and emails are not deleted from the server after several days, simply follow the tutorial above.
If your emails were deleted from the mail server, you need to transfer your emails from Outlook to Gmail by exporting and importing your data directly in Outlook.
Can I add my new Gmail address to the Outlook app?
Of course! Simply follow this tutorial.
The transfer from Outlook to Gmail takes very long. What should I do?
In case you did not activate the option “Ignore Google Bandwidth Limits”, stop the current transfer and start a new one, enabling this option. And don’t worry: MailJerry will pick up the transfer right where you left, so you won’t loose any progress you made so far.
Sometimes, the reason for a slow transfer is caused by the old mail server (old account or your Outlook.com account). If this is the case, there is little you can do. Simply proceed with the transfer and use your old account as usual during the transfer. Even if the migration to Gmail takes several days, the auto-sync ensures that you won’t loose any data.
Do I need to download my emails to my computer?
No. Since MailJerry is a cloud email migration tool, your email data is directly transferred from Outlook to Gmail.
Can I shut down MailJerry / my computer during the transfer?
Yes. That’s one of the many advantages of using MailJerry.
Can I run multiple migrations at once?
Yes, you can start as many migrations simultaneously as you wish.
I still have some questions / need further assistance!
For further questions, have a look at our FAQ section and our Mail Migration Blog that offers a wide range of tutorials!
