Import Archived Outlook Email Into Gmail Using GML

You want to switch completely to Gmail, but you want all your email in one place? Follow these instructions to import your archived or saved email from Outlook into your Gmail account.

Steps

  1. Move your Outlook mailbox to Microsoft Outlook Express. Open Outlook, then open Outlook Express (download it for free if necessary). In Outlook Express, select File > Import and select Messages.
    • In open dialogue box choose Microsoft Outlook and then select Next to import messages in Outlook Express.
  2. Move your Outlook Express mailbox to Mozilla Thunderbird. Download and install Mozilla Thunderbird (a free, open-source replacement for Outlook from the people who make Firefox). When prompted during the installation process, be sure to have Thunderbird import your mail and click Next.
    • Choose Outlook Express and click next to import messages in Thunderbird.Installing Thunderbird allows extraction of your old mail from Microsoft's proprietary – and difficult – PST file format into a more open mBox file. While Thunderbird offers the option to import mail directly from Microsoft Outlook, the data is less likely to get corrupted if you add the intermediate step of importing to Outlook Express)
  3. Download and install Google Mail Loader (GML). This is a free, open-source program by Mark Lyon. .
  4. Open GML loader, select the Find button under "Configure Your Email File", and browse your hard drive to locate the mail file for Thunderbird. First, locate your Profile folder using the instructions below. Then, look inside to find your Mail folder.
    ForWindows Vista and 7 Click the Start button.
    Type %APPDATA%.
    Click the Roaming folder that appears in the search results.
    Go to Thunderbird > Profiles.
    For Windows 2000 and XP
    Click the Start button and go to Run.
    Type %APPDATA% and press OK.
    Go to Thunderbird > Profiles.
    For Linux and Unix
    Show hidden files and folders. How you do this will depend on your system. In Nautilus, for example, go to View > Show Hidden Files.
    Find ~/.thunderbird/<Profile name>/; if you’re using a third-party build (ex. Ubuntu or Debian), find ~/.mozilla-thunderbird<Profile name>.
  5. Select and highlight the individual folder of mail you wish to import into Gmail.
    • Each mail folder appears twice - once with extension .msf and once without an extension. Select the item without an extension.
  6. Open your Gmail account and, if possible, clean out your Inbox. All the archived mail you import will go straight into your Inbox. Once it does, you will want to select it and archive it as necessary, which will be much simpler to do without having to sort through other messages in the Inbox at the same time. (Alternatively, you can tag all current emails with a tag so they can be easily located in the archives and returned to the Inbox later.)
  7. Choose the file type in GML. There are two options for mBox files. If you try with the More Strict option and GML finds 0 messages in your file, change to the Less Strict mBox option on and try again.
  8. Choose the message type. Messages imported from your Sent Items folder can be sent to the Sent Items folder in GMail. However, they will also appear in your Inbox, where you will then want to delete them. (All other messages will be sent to the Inbox, and from there you can select them and archive them.)
  9. Enter your Gmail address.
  10. Fill in the correct SMTP server name. The program defaults with a Google SMTP server, but it may not work for everyone. If it doesn’t work for you, see instructions on the Google Gmail Loader site.
  11. Click the Send to Gmail button in GML and monitor the send process.If you have thousands of emails, it could take hours to import.
  12. Open your Gmail account and review the progress as GML imports your messages.
  13. Organize your Gmail messages. As your messages are being imported, they can be archived from the Inbox (or deleted from the Inbox if they are already present in Sent Items).
  14. Select desired messages (or select all if desired). Click Archive. This will archive all the selected messages. Repeat until all desired messages have been archived.

Tips

  • Since Gmail has an IMAP interface, you can connect your Gmail account to Outlook and move emails directly to Gmail instead.
  • Instead of cleaning out all current emails before the import, set a new filter to tag all new incoming mails from the SMTP mail address.
  • Break your Outlook email folders into ones with approximately 1,000 messages each. Occasionally, GML Loader hangs in the middle of a folder; if it's a smaller folder it's much faster to reload it.
  • If you load the same message twice, Gmail only stores it once. This means that if GML gets interrupted and you restart it, potentially re-sending certain messages, Gmail will only store the new mail you upload.

Warnings

  • Unfortunately, this process changes the timestamps on your emails. The timestamp in the inbox will be the time the message was received by Google, not when it was originally sent or received. Inside the message, however, the original date will still be displayed. You can search for parts of dates to retrieve matching messages. "Aug 94", for instance, will show you all messages from August of 1994.
    • If the displayed times are important, you could (1) temporarily set up a mail server with POP3 and IMAP protocols (such as Macallan Mail Solution Mail Server) on your computer, (2) drag and drop mails from archive folders into the mailbox using any mail client that supports IMAP, and (3) connect to the mailbox from GMail using the POP3 protocol to download the mails. This will retain the date stamps, although it needs you to be a bit more tech savvy and have an ISP that will allow the traffic.
    • Another method that lets you keep your time stamps documented on Ben Shoemate's website.
  • GMail Loader is not sanctioned by Google and in theory may result in the suspension of your Gmail account. However, there have been no actual reports of suspensions.

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Sources and Citations

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