Your geek friends have convinced you to make that switch from Windows Live Hotmail to Gmail but the problem is how to move old Hotmail email messages and folders to the new Gmail address ? Hotmail doesn’t support IMAP or POP3 and it will take years to manually forward individual emails from Hotmail to Gmail.
No worries, there’s a wonderful solution that costs $0 and comes from Microsoft itself - its the Office Outlook connector and works with Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007.
Here’s a step by step guide on moving emails from Hotmail to Gmail via Outlook:
1. Install the Outlook connector and then configure your MSN Hotmail / Windows Live Hotmail accounts with Outlook.
2. Once you have all your Hotmail email message available locally inside Outlook, configure Gmail IMAP access inside Outlook.
3. Now copy or just drag-n-drop the Hotmail folders (downloaded in Step 1) over your Gmail Inbox folder in Outlook. Its the same migration procedure as described in a previous tutorial - Backup Outlook Email to Gmail.
As your Outlook synchronizes with Gmail, all your Hotmail messages will become available inside Gmail as well. And if you have multiple Hotmail accounts, this trick will help you consolidate email messages from all those account at one place.
Related: Move Emails from Gmail or Hotmail to Yahoo!
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/move-emails-from-hotmail-to-gmail-outlook-imap/1951/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
“No worries, there’s a wonderful solution that costs $0 and comes from Microsoft itself”
But Outlook is not free.
Written by Dan on 12.17.07
This is a simple way to transfer emails between Gmail and Hotmail accounts. I will write about this in my blog. Thanks Amit!!
Written by VikBar on 12.18.07
but the trial version is. and since you just want to move your mails once, that should be enough
Written by the dude on 12.18.07
i actually already knew about it and it’s cool :) But which is that cool outlook theme or is it on vista?
Written by Keshav Khera on 12.18.07
This method does not always work. That is because as usual Microsoft shafts the user. I used to pay 20$ a year when hotmail started charging money to be accessible via outlook/outlook express. However I stopped renewing my membership after a couple of years as that is a waste of money. So now when i try to connect, I get an error in my send/receive dialog box saying that I dont have permissions.
Another reason to move away from any microsoft product.
Written by arZan on 12.18.07
I actually blogged about this earlier this week, with some other ways to do it as well..
Written by Steve on 12.18.07
Why not just use GetMail for hotmail to import to gmail? (v3.2…the versions after that seem to be $$)
One step transfer from your hotmail account to your gmail. It runs in the background on your PC and can be setup to check and forward mail from your hotmail account to your gmail at preset intervals.
Written by Rowan on 12.19.07
i caarried out the steps recommended, but outlook wont let me copy the hotmail inbox into the gmail inbox folder in outlook - i get a message saying that the action can’t be performed until the complete message is downloaded - do you know why this is?
thanks
Written by nking on 05.15.08
Yeah once you set this up you realize how good the outlook connector for hotmail is and how awful the google imap support is.
Written by Wes on 06.12.08