Convert a Gmail account from POP to IMAP and keep folder structure?

Question

I currently use POP to access my gmail through thunderbird, but I would like to switch to IMAP so that my folders are mirrored on the server, and my sent emails are also available through the web interface.

The problem is that I have 1000s of emails in many different folders in Thunderbird, and in gmail, all my emails are in the same folder.

How can I perform the migration, and get all my folders from my POP access into Gmail?

Solution 1

Setup a new IMAP account in Thunderbird then simply drag&drop your folders from the POP3 account into the IMAP account.

Solution 2

You can export your email messages from Thunderbird to an IMAP account preserving the folder structure and avoiding duplicates using MsgExtract.

MsgExtract verifies if the message exist at the target folder prior to uploading it.

You can also suppress the top most folders when replicating the folder structure:

http://docs.maildev.com/article/35-how-can-i-suppress-the-top-folders-when-exporting-email-messages-to-some-target

(Disclaimer, I am the author of MsgExtract)

Solution 3

This post from Google might answer your question on how the transition will work:

How do actions sync in IMAP?

Here's a guide to how other actions in your IMAP client will appear in the Gmail web interface.

I'm not really sure though how this will help you, it just explains how working with IMAP is translated to Gmail.

Comments

[harrymc]

For your bounty/bounties to be useful, you should really much expand your post with details of what you have tried and what doesn't work. You might also take this article which contains the official way of doing that, and explain what's wrong with this approach.

[martineau]

This sounds like an incredibly good idea. Have you actually done it?

[martineau]

Also, this sounds like it could get tricky since there's only one Gmail account involved -- a pre-existing one with (presumably) messages already in it.

[Nicu Zecheru]

@martineau Yes, I had IMAP on one PC and POP3 on another one, and moved my emails from POP to IMAP.

[Nicu Zecheru]

@m4wooster You're welcome. Folders created in your email client are actually Labels on GMail, this is why nested folder's don't come across very well.

[jponce]

We have a 30-days limited license priced at $15

[Sam Hasler]

Ah, found them: maildev.com/buy/#itab1-tmplic That's more reasonable.

[Sam Hasler]

I hadn't considered deleting everything from gmail before uploading, I guess that would work but I'm not convinced I have everything in gmail downloaded so it would be nice if there was a way to verify that first.

[Oliver Salzburg]

@SamHasler: You could download all messages first and remove all duplicates locally. In the past, I've used addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/… to achieve that. I don't know how practical it would be in your situation.

[Sam Hasler]

You're correct, I do want to apply my current folder names as labels. The emails have been manually sorted, so filters aren't an option. I don't see how applying a label to All Mail will help, the emails I upload via IMAP folders (i.e. label) will have labels, whilst the old emails won't, so I can already tell them apart.

[Sam Hasler]

If I understand how that addon works correctly I don't think it will help. If messages aren't in the same folder (which they won't be as pop emails are sorted into folders and gmail emails aren't) then it won't find a duplicate.

[Old Pro]

@Sam, lack of label is not a good label. What happens when you label one of those old emails? Now you don't know where it came from and you no longer have a distinctive label to use for future actions. Having the zzOldGmail label will make it much easier to look for duplicates or non-duplicates in the future.

[Sam Hasler]

Ah, I misunderstood you then. I thought you were proposing a solution that would allow deduplication as a one off event (so label or no label on old gmail would be the same at that point), not an ongoing process.

[Old Pro]

@Sam, the thing is, you didn't explain your duplication situation. I'm assuming that all the email are duplicated and that you don't have so much email that Gmail won't store the dups. In that case, you upload all the folders and use them and just keep around the zzOldGmail in case one slipped through. When you're satisfied all is good then you move all the zzOldGmail to the trash and you're done.