Migrate Mail from Outlook to Gmail Easily Everytime

I recently helped a colleague migrate mail from Outlook to Gmail, so I know what to do and what to avoid.

Through this guide, I aim to make it clear what needs to be done to safely and surely change the position of all email messages from an Outlook account to a @gmail account.

Why I Migrated My Mail from Outlook to Gmail?

Gmail gave me a better overall package than what I was getting in Outlook. The UI felt a lot smoother, and although it was not a completely ad-free experience, the Ads in Gmail did not invade my inbox as in Outlook.

Most of my work was already happening on Google’s cloud suite, so it felt natural that my email should also

Your reasons to switch can be different from mine, but our end goal is the same. That is to securely transfer all of the Outlook emails into Gmail.

Migrate Mail from Outlook to Gmail via Forward + Auto Forwarding Combo

It’s not that hard to figure out; it is the same process discussed in my guide on transferring Outlook folders from one account to another.

However, forwarding has a major limitation that makes it completely useless for large migrations. Those are the daily and hourly email sending limits, which are set at 500 and 100, respectively. There is no way to bypass this limit.

Once you hit it, you won’t be able to use your email for the rest of the day. Considering a typical email account contains thousands of emails, forwarding messages makes migration too long to be justified.

Then there is also the issue of Metadata alteration that may not go down well in industries where compliance is taken seriously.

Via Email Clients

Perhaps the simplest way is to use an email client and migrate mail from Outlook to Gmail for free.

The basic idea is that you set up both the source Outlook and destination Gmail in the same client.

Once done, all that’s left is to drag and drop emails across.

However, be careful as you might lose your data. Also, for small transfers, this method works fine, but the moment you try to scale up, you run into issues. Not being able to track email is a major drawback. It might not affect personal users much, but for businesses, recording data transfers is mandatory.

Plus, there is no telling how much time the process is going to take. Instead, go with something a bit more reliable.

Using Gmail’s Built-in Import Mechanism

Although Gmail does not allow the import of email file formats like PST, MBOX, or EML, we can add our email accounts to it. Here is how to migrate mail from Outlook to Gmail via the Gmail settings panel.

Follow these steps:

• Step 1: Log in to Gmail, click on the gear icon, and click the See all settings option.
• Step 2: Switch to Accounts and Import, then click on Import mail and contacts.
• Step 3: A small dialog box opens, enter the Outlook email and press continue.
• Step 4: Accept the terms and conditions.
• Step 5: Choose the workloads you want to bring along with you.
• Step 6: Press Start Import.

What Made Me Give Up on Manual Outlook to Gmail Mail Migration

Although this method sounds simple, it’s not for everyone. If you want to transfer a tiny portion of the email data, then unfortunately, you can’t do that. This migrates all of your data; no timeline filtering is allowed.

Even the setup is quite slow. Despite having decent internet speed at every step, the UI kept loading under the guise of “Checking” for 5 minutes. Making a simple transfer longer than usual.

The occasional “Error: This account cannot be imported right now. Please try again later.” is something that I faced, and you may also have to deal with. If it happens, you must restart the whole procedure.

Then there was the total time of the transfer. It can take anywhere from a few hours to one whole week for the task to finish, and you cannot stop the process midway.

So if you are here just to import Outlook contacts to Gmail, my other guide provides an in-depth explanation. Be sure to check it out.

For every pair of accounts, you need to set up the entire task again and again.

Professional Means to Migrate Mail from Outlook to Gmail

The SysTools IMAP migrator goes beyond simple single email transfers by allowing simultaneous multi-user transfer.

You can monitor the data movement in real time through the Dashboard. Moreover, at the end, you get both a summarized and a detailed report of what has been migrated and how much time it took.

Before you use the tool, make your Outlook account ready. By which I mean is to enable 2FA and make an App password. The latter is not possible unless and until you have 2FA enabled.

Once it’s done, I also suggest that you take an Outlook backup so you have a safety net in case anything goes wrong.

Then go through the steps one by one and migrate mail from Outlook to Gmail:

Step 1. Launch the tool on your Windows or Mac, and skip over the IMAP and email workload selection as they are preset. Just apply the start/end dates and press Next.

Step 2. On the source screen, scroll down and select the Others option from the list. Type the Outlook IMAP data, validate, and press Next.

Step 3. Likewise, for the destination, choose the Gmail option from the list, and validate directly the tool fills the data you dont need to.

Step 4. Map the users via the CSV template.

Step 5. See the user list, validate, and start migration.

Conclusion

Here, I taught you everything that needs to be done to migrate mail from Outlook to Gmail safely. You can use the forwarding rules for all upcoming messages and move the existing messages one at a time. Email clients are another suitable way. Moreover, Gmail contains its own built-in method to carry out the transfer.

The problem is that none of those manual methods is scalable to multi-account setups. Which is why the tool I proposed is a necessary one-of-a-kind solution that can help out everyone who needs to move a lot of mail from multiple accounts together.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I have to use the Outlook client for transferring email data?

No, it’s not mandatory to use the Outlook client. You can use any other client. I use it as it was preinstalled on my PC.

Q: How long does it take to migrate mail from Outlook to Gmail?

If you choose any of the manual methods, the time it takes depends entirely on how fast you perform the steps. What I can guarantee is that if you choose the tool, you will transfer mail data a lot faster.

Q: Is Gmail better than Outlook?

Depends on who you ask, as personal choice supercedes actual metrics. However, considering Gmail has a massive 1.8 billion monthly users, by far the largest of any email service, it seems that the majority choose it over Outlook.