Monday, January 31, 2011

Importing Outlook 2011 to GMail or Google Apps

My company finally made the switch to Google Apps. I have been using Outlook for the last few years to access my email from a FirstClass server and upgraded to Outlook 2011 a few months ago. I love the Google Email interface so now it's time to ditch Outlook completely. Unfortunately there isn't a direct import utility from Outlook 2011 to GMail or Google Apps so I combined a few. Here's  how:

  1. Download, install and run EagleFiler (Free 30-day trial/$40 to buy)

  2. Close the how-to guide.

  3. Create a new library in EagleFiler called Outlook Export (name doesn't matter)

  4. In Outlook, select the emails you want to import (use ⌘-A) and then press F1 (Fn-F1 for most Mac keyboards)

  5. Let EagleFiler do it's work. If you have Growl, you will see notifications as it processes the email into mbox format.

  6. Repeat step 4 for all of the folders you want to import

  7. Open Mac Mail and setup a dummy account if you don't already have one

  8. In Mac Mail - select File - Import Mailboxes and select Files in mbox format and select Continue

  9. Browse to the location that you created your EagleFiler Library (mine was in Documents:Outlook Export) and select the Outlook Export Folder and Choose

  10. After a bit of Searching for data... you will receive an Import box allowing you to select the folders you want to import. Check the ones you want and click Continue

  11. Google makes it easier to get from Mac Mail to GMail by using the Google Email Uploader Mac. Go get, install and run it.

  12. Google Email Uploader Mac will detect the Mac Mail account automatically. Enter your credentials for GMail or Google Apps.

  13. Make sure you have Apple Mail selected and clock Import


It took me about 3-hours to upload 9500 messages but it worked. Special thanks to C-Command software for making a great product. I wish there was a donate button on their site so I could shell a few bucks their way for making this possible.

9 comments:

  1. This is really great advice and I got through to the last step, but the Google Email Uploader doesn't support uploading to Gmail accounts! Are there any further programmes you can suggest?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Emma - I did a quick search and apparently you can enable the IMAP feature and drag all of the email from your local folders into Gmail directly. The article is a bit old, 2007, but may do the trick for you - http://www.zoliblog.com/2007/10/24/simplified-guide-to-importing-all-your-archive-email-into-gmail/. Let me know if it works and I will update the blog post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great advice. Thanks very much for publishing this.

    Worked a treat to export my 6 months of email from Outlook 2011 for Mac to gmail.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Jim for the very helpful guide.

    I found, once all my email was imported into MAIL - I could setup gmail on MAIL and simply drag the imported folders down to GMAIL...

    Cheers
    Dan

    ReplyDelete
  5. Any suggestions for importing Outlook 2011 to Gmail but from an external hard drive backed up using time machine? My mac hd crashed at about the same time my company switched to using gmail so I too would like to move away from outlook. I had Office for Mac and have been able to access word docs, ppt and excel using the macdriver program but I do not have Outlook on my pc. 1. Do you know how I would view the outlook 2011 files on my PC using macdriver?
    2. If I installed Outlook on my PC would I be able to view/import files from Outlook 2011 located on my external hard drive?

    ReplyDelete
  6. I believe the Mac version of Outlook uses a proprietary Database. You will most likely need a copy of Outlook for Mac to recover your data before importing it into gmail.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This was so helpful! However, how do I get ahold of skipped messages??? Thanks in advance!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I did ll this but ended up with a lot of email without content in mail

    ReplyDelete
  9. after capturing im getting
    Applescript Error. Ef encountered an apple script error while trying to capture from Outlook. cant get length of missing value ( line 113).

    can any one help. im using trial version EF 1.6.1.

    ReplyDelete