How to move emails using IMAP and Thunderbird
I ran into the problem of moving my emails last week and after searching for the answer myself I decided to write my own tutorial. It’s all very simple once you’ve figured out that Thunderbird is a free and easy solution. Here’s how to do it:
- Create both accounts in Thunderbird.
Tools>Account Settings>Add Account
- Choose “Email Account”.
- Enter your Name, and your Email Address.
- Choose IMAP and type in your IMAP mail server (Example: imap.gmail.com).
- Enter your Incoming Username.
- Enter an Account Name for this inbox.
- Set your old inbox for offline use.
Tools>Account Settings>Offline & Disk Space
- Check the box “Make messages in my Inbox available when I am working offline”.
- Select all your emails and “Copy to” new inbox.
- Select all your emails by clicking the first and last email while holding down the shift key. Or using Ctrl+A shortcut keys.
- Then right click the highlighted emails and choose Copy To>YOUR NEW EMAIL INBOX
Just wait for all your emails to transfer and you’re all set. Depending on what email service you are using you may have to copy a few at a time because of bandwidth limitations. Also this method will not work if you are using POP email because POP removes emails from the server. This method will only work if you have emails residing on your email server and are provided with IMAP capabilities.
