This guide covers the process of using Mozilla Thunderbird as a migration tool to move emails from a St. Ambrose account to another account. Please note that server configurations for your accounts are very particular, so follow these steps exactly as written.
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open-source email client developed by the Mozilla Foundation, also known for Mozilla Firefox. It can be downloaded here for Mac, PC, and Linux.
Abstract steps to complete:
- Download & install Thunderbird
- Add a "source" account and a "destination" account to Thunderbird
- Copy emails from "source" account to Thunderbird local folder
- Move emails from Thunderbird local folder to "destination" account
- Repeat steps 3 & 4 until all desired emails have been moved
*The source account will be the email that you want to migrate FROM—in most cases, you'll need to set up your student Gmail as the source and your O365/Outlook account as the destination. These are not special configurations you need to make; you'll just need to attach both accounts to Thunderbird.
Installing Thunderbird:
Once you've downloaded Thunderbird, run the installer to begin the process.
After you've installed the program, you should be able to run it from your taskbar or Finder—you'll be first prompted to add an account; enter the name of the account and your email address, then click "Configure manually":
This will open a dropdown where you'll need to input server information. Below is listed the server information for Gmail & Outlook/O365. For migrating from Google to Office 365/Outlook, you'll need to add both accounts:
Gmail Server Settings:
Incoming Server
Hostname: imap.gmail.com
Port: 993
Connection security: SSL/TLS
Authentication method: OAuth2
Username: Your SAU Gmail
Outgoing Server
Hostname: smtp.gmail.com
Port: 465
Connection security: SSL/TLS
Authentication method: OAuth2
Username: Your SAU Gmail
Set these exactly as you see, and then click "Re-test" to ensure the configuration is valid
After you get the confirmation that the server settings are correct, click the "Done" button, and another window should open—this window should have your email already filled in and should look like this:
Click next and enter your password, then follow any instructions for MFA & permissions.
Outlook Server Settings:
Incoming Server
Protocol: IMAP
Hostname: outlook.office365.com
Port: 993
Connection security: SSL/TLS
Authentication method: OAuth2
Username: Your SAU Outlook
Outgoing Server
Hostname: smtp-mail.outlook.com
Port: 587
Connection security: STARTTLS
Authentication method: OAuth2
Username: Your SAU Outlook
Set these exactly as you see, and then click "Re-test" to ensure the configuration is valid
After you get the confirmation that the server settings are correct, click the "Done" button, and another window should open—this window should have your email already filled in and should look like this:
Click next and enter your password, then follow any instructions for MFA & permissions.
Migrating Emails:
Return to the Thunderbird window, and you should see that your email account is now linked to Thunderbird. You'll need to complete this process twice, once for each of the accounts that you want to move items to/from.
To add another account, locate the gear icon in the bottom left corner of Thunderbird to access the settings menu, then click on Account Settings near the bottom of the page. Once on the account settings page, you should see a "New Account" button in the top left—click this to repeat the process of adding an account.
Once that's done, you should see the linked email addresses as discrete inboxes in your Thunderbird client:
It may take some time to load all of your emails into Thunderbird. To see your progress, look at the bottom of the window, and you should see a progress bar that looks like this:
Depending on the size of your inbox, you may need to let Thunderbird run overnight to load all of your messages.
Once this process has completed, you can follow these steps to begin moving emails from one inbox to another:
- Navigate to your overall inbox by clicking the envelope icon in the top left of Thunderbird
- You should see a mailbox labeled "Local Folders" among the listed inboxes. Right-click on this and add a new local folder. The name of the folder isn't important, but make sure it's set up as a subfolder for your local folders rather than your email accounts.
- Open the inbox of your "source" account (where you'll be moving the items from), sort your inbox by oldest, and then select a chunk of emails by clicking one, scrolling down/up, and then shift+clicking another email—this will allow you to select multiple emails at once and work your way forwards in time. You can select thousands of emails at once, but the system can get overloaded—the maximum number of emails that I've had consistent success with is 2500. You can also select individual emails by using Ctrl+click if you only need to select items to move to your new inbox.
- Right-click on this chunk of emails and click "Move to," then select the local folder you'd created
- Repeat this process as many times as necessary to move all email items to a local folder
- Then, from your local folder, select another chunk of emails that you'd like to move to your new inbox and repeat step 4, except now you'll select your "destination" account instead of the local folder. It is recommended to create a folder in the destination account, as there may be duplicates of some emails if everything is dropped into the main inbox. This process can be completed in the same way as step 2
- Repeat until you've moved all of the items to your new email inbox
After that, your Gmail inbox should be empty, and your Outlook inbox should have the emails from your previous account!
Please send any questions to ITsupport@sau.edu. be sure to include your name, operating system of the device you're working on, your email addresses (destination/source), and any error codes or other information about your situation
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.