Moving emails from GMail to another server

[Peter Daemen]

Dear team,

My startup has taken off and for privacy reasons my clients want me to migrate to another mail server.

This means that I need to select ~30% of my email in gmail, and MOVE it to another email account. I.e. it needs to be deleted from GMAIL.

I am using Thunderbird to move/copy emails between accounts. First I MOVE from GMAIL to a local saved folder. Then I MOVE from local saved folder to the new email inbox. All via IMAP.

What settings do I need to use so that after MOVE from Gmail folder to local folder, the email is automatically expunged / deleted / forever gone from Gmail servers?

Thanks!!!

P

[John Weiss]

On 01/19/21 01:22, Peter Daemen wrote:

> I am using Thunderbird to move/copy emails between accounts. First I MOVE from GMAIL to a local saved folder. Then I MOVE from local saved folder to the new email inbox. All via IMAP.
>
> What settings do I need to use so that after MOVE from Gmail folder to local folder, the email is automatically expunged / deleted / forever gone from Gmail servers?

Dunno 'bout automatic, but simply delete the mail from the Google
folders and then empty the trash. "Forever gone" is unlikely, though,
because Google likely has archives that they will keep forever...

[Andreas]

This was discussed a very long time ago (maybe 25 years ago or so). If I
recall well Google never actually delete from server those emails
deleted by users. Google simply conceals the data.

[Chris Ilias]

Hi Peter,
Congrats on your startup.

Gmail's IMAP implementation is a little misleading due to the way Gmail
works. In Gmail, everything resides in the archive, and other folders
are virtual - messages are tagged, and the folder is a saved search of
all messages with that tag.

As a result, when you remove a message from the IMAP folder, it just
removes the tag in Gmail.


To be on the safe side, instead using Thunderbird to purge those
messages from the archive, I would use the Gmail website to do that
after moving them to Thunderbird.

--
Mailing list/Newsgroup moderator

[Arthur Conan Doyle]

John Weiss <jrweis...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Dunno 'bout automatic, but simply delete the mail from the Google
>folders and then empty the trash. "Forever gone" is unlikely, though,
>because Google likely has archives that they will keep forever...

Not exactly. After all then email has been confirmed moved, use the GMail web
interface and delete everything in the "All Mail" folder. Delete just puts a tag
on the message.

[John Weiss]

I agree that using the web interface is the best way, but I have deleted
messages from the gmail inbox in Thunderbird and watched them disappear
from the web interface screen almost immediately. Same with Trash...

[John Weiss]

P.S. Just tried it again. Works as I said, though I had to refresh the
screen.