Move emails from one Gmail account to another

 By Anoop Verma

THESE days Gmail is offering substantial storage space, more than 10 GB, as of now. The storage space is rising all the time in small amounts. However, with explosion in data usage, 10GB is not proving to be enough, many users end up spending their entire quota in relatively short period of time. If your Gmail account is being blocked as you have breached the 10GB data limit, then you can either resort to deleting the heavy mails from your account, or you can opt for moving your mails from the old Gmail account to a new one.

It would have been wonderful if Gmail had a system that would allow mails to be moved between accounts at the click of a button, but it is not that easy. In order to move mails to a new account, you have to begin by logging into your old account. Go to Settings, then Forwarding and POP and choose Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded). Make sure to click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the window.

After this you have to log into your new Gmail account and go to Settings. Here you have to click on Accounts. Then you have to click on the link that says, “Add a mail account you own. In the text box that appears, you have to type in the old Gmail account address and click the Next button.

A new text box will appear. Now you have to verify your email by adding the Username and Password for the old email account. You have to ensure that you choose pop.gmail.com from the POP Server drop down list. You also have to make sure 995 is selected under Port. The link for “Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server” should not be checked.

You will also be asked if you want to be able to send emails as your old email ID through your new email ID. This is useful if you want the mail to come into the new account, and also to be able to respond using the old email address. In case, you want to make the new email ID your primary address, you can optionally change it to the new one. This is also a good idea as it enables people to forget your old address and start using the new one only when they need to communicate with you.

You can also opt to archive Gmail’s copy under “When messages are accessed with POP” to have your old account’s inbox cleared or delete Gmail’s copy to move mail instead of copying it; you can also choose the keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox (unread) or mark Gmail’s copy as read.

Of course, you will need to prove to your new Gmail account that you actually own that old email ID from which the mails are to be transferred. This can be done by clicking on the Send Verification button. You can then log into your old email account and copy the confirmation code in the email. Paste that into the appropriate box. Click Verify.

That’s it. Now you can afford to sit back and relax, while Gmail performs the task of transporting your emails from old account to new account. Depending on the number of mails that you have in your old account, this can take several hours. Gmail will download mail from the old account in batches of approximately 100–200 emails at a time instead. Typically, importing will start with the oldest mail. So you need to be patient about it.