When it’s time to change computer there are different ways of transferring your email.
The traditional way involves exporting from one computer and email client and importing to the new computer and client – for example moving from Outlook Express on Windows XP to Windows Live Mail on Windows 7 (hopefully you get to skip Vista completely!). Or perhaps you want to move email from Outlook to Apple Mail or Entourage because you’ve changed to a Mac. If the operating systems are the same and the email clients are the same then there probably won’t be any problems but if they are different this can be tricky.
There is another way that will save you long term pain and deliver plenty of extra benefits!
You can choose to set up an email sync between your current email client and Gmail. And then you set up an email sync between Gmail and your new email client. For an example of synchronizing Thunderbird and Gmail check out the video at Thunderbird sync: Why use Thunderbird and Gmail to manage your email
As I mentioned, transferring your email this way gives you additional benefits:
1. You can choose to have your email synchronized on multiple computers – you can sync as many computers and as many email clients as you like with Gmail.
2. If you want to try out a new email client, you can do so without interfering with your old setup. No need to import/export email from client to client every time.
3. You can use several email clients. You could run Outlook and Thunderbird side by side and they will automatically be
in sync. This could be on the same or on different computers.
4. The next time you change computers just install your favorite email client and sync it with Gmail. No need to
migrate email from your old computer again.
5. If your harddisk crashes or your computer gets stolen you have an automatic backup as your email is also stored on Gmail
You can move email between any email clients that offer IMAP. We recommend using Gmail as the IMAP server, or synchronization hub, because it’s free, it’s a powerful email client and we’ve tested it thoroughly with various email clients. You can however use any other IMAP server and get the same effect.
If you are a relatively tech savvy user you can follow the steps below, if you are an “average” user then go to Easy-Email.net for more information about synchronizing your email.
The basic steps are:
1. Create a Gmail account. This is free.
2. In your old email client create an account to synchronize with Gmail via IMAP.
3. Copy all your old email to the new account. Your email will now be uploaded to Gmail.
4. In your new email client create an account to synchronize with Gmail via IMAP.
Your email will now be downloaded to your new email client.
5. Export your contacts from your old email client.
6. Import your contacts to your new email client (and optionally to Gmail).
For more detail on the process see the article on transferring email