Transfering from hotmail to gmail

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badb...@gmail.com

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Nov 3, 2007, 12:23:48 AM11/3/07
to Gmail-Users
I have been having problems with my hotmail account and decided it was
time for a change. Gmail seems to have lots of services and features
that hotmail doesn't but I need help with a small problem. I would
like to transfer my mail folders from my old hotmail account so I can
delete it completely. I have a very large collection of saved
messages and am really hoping that I won't have to gmail them to
myself one at a time. Is there a way to transfer groups of saved
messages from hotmail to gmail? PLEASE, does anyone have a suggestion?

Zack (Doc)

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Nov 3, 2007, 6:16:27 AM11/3/07
to Gmail...@googlegroups.com
Did you search prior posts to this group? Many people have asked
about changing from Hotmail to GMail, and many many solutions have
been posted. Too many for me to capture here, but the gist is:

Hotmail (free version) does not support POP, so you have 2 options;
individually forward all the messages you want to keep, or use a third
party site to "turn your Hotmail into a POP account".
If you upgrade to, or are already on, the paid version of Hotmail,
then you have POP.
Once you have your Hotmail in a POP state, you can tell GMail to
retrieve it. POP cannot carry folder information, so they'll all
arrive without prior filing information; and in waves of messages
instead of all at once.

Search the group (as the admin rules suggest you do first) and read
some of the threads about it. If you have a more specific question
after doing so, feel free to ask as someone with personal experience
on the subject might be able to answer.

Nate

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Nov 4, 2007, 12:01:16 PM11/4/07
to Gmail-Users
I have found the best solution for this problem. It takes a little
bit of time, but it works perfectly. See, the problem with just
forwarding all your mail is that you lose the "from" name, and the
time that the email came, so emails you got 2 years ago, look like
they came in the same time as email you got 2 minutes ago.

With this solution, you not only keep the username intact, but it also
keeps the time that the email arrived. Therefore, it looks as if you
got the email right into your gmail account originally. AND, the best
part is, you can even get your emails in new gmail labels to mirror
your hotmail folders.

The key is setting up a 2nd gmail account as an intermediary account.
Then you use Thunderbird with the webmail and hotmail extensions, to
download all your hotmail, one folder at a time. Then use Gmail
Loader to upload the mail to your secondary Gmail account, and set up
Gmail fetcher on your first account to fetch all the mail from your
secondary gmail account. Here, I'll give it to you step by step:

1. Get Thunderbird. You don't even need to install it. The portable
version will work just fine. You can get it here:
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable. (Sorry,
not sure how to create hyperlinks here.) Extract it, then run
Thunderbird. When it opens up, it's going to want you to set up an
email account. Skip this for now and just hit cancel.

2. Download the Webmail extension for Thunderbird. You can get it
here: http://webmail.mozdev.org/installation.html. To install it,
right-click on the link "Web-Mail-1.2.5", and "save target as"
somewhere on your pc. Go into Thunderbird and go to Tools > Add-ons.
Then click "Install" and browse for the file you just downloaded and
install it. It will restart Thunderbird.

3. Now Download the Hotmail extension from the same place you
downloaded the Webmail extension, and follow the same steps in Step 2,
only this time, when it restarts Thunderbird, you want to go ahead and
set up your email account. Choose "Web Mail" from the list. Go
through and put all your information in. Where it asks for username,
make sure to put in your full email address. So put in your full
email address in both the email address box and the username box.
WAIT - On the last page of the Wizard, don't choose to download
messages now. We need to set up your hotmail account a bit so we can
do it one folder at a time.

4. Now go back into Tools > Add-Ons, and go to the options for the
Hotmail add-on. Choose the type of Hotmail account you're using.
Then go to the POP tab. Click on the "Add" button, and type in the
name of the first folder in your hotmail folder list. Type it exactly
the way it is spelled in your hotmail, case sensitive. You can close
the Add-Ons section.

5. Now just click "Get Mail" in Thunderbird. If all goes well, it
should be downloading the folder you chose. You should be able to
tell when they're all downloaded if you go into your hotmail, and make
all the mail in that folder "unread". That will tell you how many
emails there were in that folder. And you can see that it matches in
Thunderbird.

Now you should have the first folder of email downloaded from
Hotmail. Next you're going to set up your intermediate gmail account,
and use gmail loader to upload to that account.

6. Set up your 2nd gmail account. Name it whatever you want.

7. Download Gmail Loader here: http://marklyon.org/gmail/

8. You can read the instructions there on how to use it. It's not
too hard, but just read the instructions. You might have to change
the SMTP server to a different one that he will give you on his site.

9. Run Gmail Loader to upload your Thunderbird mail. Point Gmail
Loader to your mail profile in Thunderbird. I found that in Gmail
Loader, under File Type, the second mbox option worked best for me.
Put in your secondary email address, and run it. Watch your emails go
to gmail!

10. Log in to your original gmail account. Go into Settings >
Accounts. Go to "get mail from other accounts" and add your secondary
gmail account. Once you've set that up, it will start "fetching" your
email from your second gmail account.

11. Once all the email is fetched from your second account, give it
all the label of the folder you took it from in Hotmail and archive
it. Then delete all the mail in your 2nd gmail account. (or ou can
set it to do this automatically when you set up the fetching.)

12. Repeat steps 1-11 for every folder in your hotmail account.

Hope you have fun! Let me know if you have any questions.

Nate

Nate

unread,
Nov 4, 2007, 12:49:28 PM11/4/07
to Gmail-Users
I meant to say repeat steps 9-11. But you have to go into the Hotmail
extension settings, and change the name of the folder you are going to
download ever time you do it.

> > On 11/3/07, badbad...@gmail.com <badbad...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I have been having problems with my hotmail account and decided it was
> > > time for a change. Gmail seems to have lots of services and features
> > > that hotmail doesn't but I need help with a small problem. I would
> > > like to transfer my mail folders from my old hotmail account so I can
> > > delete it completely. I have a very large collection of saved
> > > messages and am really hoping that I won't have to gmail them to
> > > myself one at a time. Is there a way to transfer groups of saved

> > > messages from hotmail to gmail? PLEASE, does anyone have a suggestion?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Ryan Morehart

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Nov 5, 2007, 5:04:24 AM11/5/07
to Gmail...@googlegroups.com
I'm just curious, why can't you upload directly to the real Gmail account? What function does the second account serve?

I've never moved email to Gmail before, so I really am in the dark.

Ryan

Make long URLs memorable: http://urlet.com

Nate

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Nov 5, 2007, 10:49:38 AM11/5/07
to Gmail-Users
Sorry, I forgot to explain that. For some reason, when you upload
from Gmail Loader to a Gmail account, it changes the dates on all the
emails as the date you uploaded it as if you had just forwarded it,
so all the emails look like they came in at the same time. However,
when you have your original gmail address "fetch" them from the
secondary address, all the original received dates are restored.


On Nov 5, 3:04 am, "Ryan Morehart" <moreh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm just curious, why can't you upload directly to the real Gmail account?
> What function does the second account serve?
>
> I've never moved email to Gmail before, so I really am in the dark.
>
> Ryan
>

> > > On 11/3/07, badbad...@gmail.com <badbad...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > I have been having problems with my hotmail account and decided it was
> > > > time for a change. Gmail seems to have lots of services and features
> > > > that hotmail doesn't but I need help with a small problem. I would
> > > > like to transfer my mail folders from my old hotmail account so I can
> > > > delete it completely. I have a very large collection of saved
> > > > messages and am really hoping that I won't have to gmail them to
> > > > myself one at a time. Is there a way to transfer groups of saved
> > > > messages from hotmail to gmail? PLEASE, does anyone have a
> > suggestion?
>

> --

Zack (Doc)

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Nov 5, 2007, 12:00:15 PM11/5/07
to Gmail...@googlegroups.com
Very cool... I had guessed that it had something to do with Folder
preservation since each "fetch" can auto-label as it fetches, and
since you're repeating this for each "folder" in Hotmail, it would
help with that as well.

Very interesting to learn that fetching uploaded mails restores the
original dates.

Nate

unread,
Nov 6, 2007, 10:00:15 AM11/6/07
to Gmail-Users
Yeah, you could have it just auto-label everything as it comes in for
each folder. I just fetched them, then selected all, labeled them
what I wanted, then archived. Then did it all over again for each
folder. Hope it works for you. I've also found a way to have emails
automatically forwarded as they arrive. This is helpful for after
you're done forwarding all your email from hotmail to gmail, and
you've got a few stubborn people who just can't get your new email
address in their heads. But it involves running a little tool on your
pc 24/7 for a while.

On Nov 5, 10:00 am, "Zack (Doc)" <z...@tnan.net> wrote:
> Very cool... I had guessed that it had something to do with Folder
> preservation since each "fetch" can auto-label as it fetches, and
> since you're repeating this for each "folder" in Hotmail, it would
> help with that as well.
>
> Very interesting to learn that fetching uploaded mails restores the
> original dates.
>

Alexi

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Nov 22, 2007, 6:24:08 PM11/22/07
to Gmail-Users
this is in reference to the "Transfering from hotmail to gmail" [sic]
thread

oh man do i need help! ive been working on this all afternoon and im
about to scream and shut down the computer!

my situation:
i want to transfer my parents from Hotmail Plus (paid, has POP access)
to gmail
they already have the gmail account set up, contacts have been
imported, and pop access has been set up (meaning all the emails
coming into hotmail starting NOW go into the gmail inbox)

problem: they also want all their old emails (from years and years
back) in gmail from hotmail. oh, and if at all possible, they want
them still in the proper folders. yes, i know that makes it a lot
harder. i got really excited when i saw that Nate posted a great step
by step thing that would even allow folders to be imported and i was
following it well until step five (see below)

since they have the paying hotmail is that nice and easy through the
POP/IMAP/accounts crap in gmail or do i have to try to pull some crazy
act through Outlook/Thunderbird/Mercury to weasel those old emails
in? i cant figure out how to use gmail's built in features for pop
access in order to access OLD messages. (would marking all my
messages in hotmail as not read fix this issue?)

they also, btw, have their hotmail messages downloaded to Outlook (not
express) and i tried and failed halfway through many different
internet tutorials on switching the complicated way (using thunderbird
as well as a mail server like Mercury as a stepping stone between
hotmail and gmail and in one case also having an intermediate gmail
account)

yeah, i tried the steps given by Nate in this thread, but i got stuck
on the step "5. Now just click "Get Mail" in Thunderbird. If all
goes well, it should be downloading the folder you chose. " It did
not go well, and nothing seemed to happen. gah so i uninstalled the
fifteen different programs i had downloaded as i unsuccessfully went
thru many different tutorials and got stuck in all of them at some
intermediate step.

for further reference, i made it halfway thru this
http://www.benshoemate.com/2007/11/09/how-to-upload-all-your-old-archived-email-to-gmail-from-outlook-lotus-notes-and-unix-pine/
tutorial, getting stuck at the last sentence of Step 7.

GAH please help! thanks!

Vijay Menon

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Nov 22, 2007, 11:21:49 PM11/22/07
to Gmail...@googlegroups.com
hi There,

If I understood correctly there are some mails that are currently in Outlook Express (OE) and you would like to transfer to a Gmail ID.

I think, not very sure though, that Thunderbird (TB) can directly import the mails from OE. If that's possible, I feel that TB will preserve the Folder structure of OE.

I would suggest you try the steps that are given in this link - http://email.about.com/od/gmailtips/qt/et011906.htm. I assure you, if done properly, this will work (Assuming that you have a broadband Internet connection). I have uploaded all my old mails (~1.3 Gigs) to my Gmail ID this way (Which, BTW, was later on transferred to GFYD using pop3 access)

Couple of tips, (1) when you install Gmail Loader, Please extract all the files in the Zip file, and (2) disable your Antivirus Software and Firewall before you start uploading your mails.

For sorting by folders, or even otherwise, I would suggest you prefix your mails (That option is provided in the Gmail Loader) with a certain label like "[Hotmail\Folder-1]". This can be used for searching and labeling the mails. Gmail has a tendency to Send a Lot of Gmail Loader Loaded mails to Spam, so don't be alarmed by the sudden jump in Spam.

And coming to the mails available online (i.e. in the Hotmail Plus account and not in OE), The option to enable retrieving of old mails should be enabled in the Hotmail Account and not in the Gmail Account. What I can suggest is Do a "Send/Receive" in OE and download all the mail available online and enable forwarding (My normal Hotmail Account, has forwarding enabled for free, it's only fair to hope that the same is available for a paid account) to the gmail ID.

Hope this helps and All the best... I have been through this before :D .

Cheers,
Vijay

PS: The server method is every bit confusing as it seems, don't do it!.
--
Vijay Menon
(91) 9908327775
http://menon.ikube.org

Vijay Menon

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Nov 22, 2007, 11:32:19 PM11/22/07
to Gmail...@googlegroups.com
Hi Again,

Apologies, one small errata, you cannot Prefix Labels with Gmail Uploader, you need to use gExodus for that ( http://blog.codefront.net/gexodus/gexodus-0.2.zip).

Regards,
Vijay

Vijay Menon

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Nov 22, 2007, 11:54:16 PM11/22/07
to Gmail...@googlegroups.com
One Last thing, In case you don't want to deviate from the process in the link that I had first provided, you can also classify your mails by sending each folder to " youremai...@gmail.com" the plus "+" is required and doesn't imply concatenation of the strings


--
Vijay Menon
(91) 9908327775
http://menon.ikube.org

jerry hostasek

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Nov 23, 2007, 1:51:46 AM11/23/07
to Gmail...@googlegroups.com
I would like to send my hot mail mail (Unpaid )to my Gmail account
but when I follow the gmail 's instructions, a message to do with a
pop mail appears

Y

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Dec 1, 2007, 8:53:39 PM12/1/07
to Gmail-Users
I found this very very useful tutorial:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/11/02/how-to-transfer-and-move-hotmail-to-gmail/

This works great is your hotmail account is old or is a plus account;
these accounts allow for IMAP access.

I have 2 hotmail accounts, and I'm currently trying to merge them into
one gmail account...
- My older account worked seamlessly
- My newer account is getting no where; I managed to use izymail to
transfer some of the mail (due to it's limited free service)

I don't want to pay for any service.. just defeats the purpose of
"free" web based email!
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