How to Migrate from Exchange and Outlook to Gmail or Google Mail
86Google Mail for Domain Links
- Sign up for Google Mail for Domains
This is where you start by creating an account to move your domain to google to use google mail for your personal or business domain. - How to enable imap for google mail
Here are the simple instructions to turn on imap for your gmail or google mail. - Import contacts from outlook to gmail or google mail
It's very easy to get your contacts into gmail once you have them in a csv file. Just use file ->export in outlook and select csv as the file type, then follow these instructions. - Sync your gmail calendar with a Blackberry
This great app installs on your blackberry and will sync all new meetings to your blackberry and google calendar.
Gmail homepage
We have tried two hosted exchange providers that were lousy or so so at best. What we wanted was a reliable company email service that supported the blackberry with syncing of email and calendars.
We considered another hosted exchange service and gmail for domains. Gmail or google mail has a sync application to keep your blackberry in sync with your google calendar, it also has an application to install on your blackberry for email. The only thing it doesn't have is a way to sync contacts between the device and the contacts on google mail. We decided that we would give this free service a try.
The first thing we did was to create a google for domains account. Then we setup email for each person. After that we flipped the dns mx record per google's instructions. After a few hours the emails started to arrive in our google mail accounts.
The next step is to migrate our email out of outllook to gmail. All I did was go to file, export, and follow the steps to export a pst file from outlook. Then I went to my google mail settings and enable imap from google. *You have to enable imap in google mail for this to work. Then I went back to outlook and added an account to access gmail with imap. Once I saw my new mail sync, I went to file, import in outlook and imported my old mail from the pst file to the google imap account. I had over one gb of email. It took nearly an entire day for the import to complete. Then I did the same thing for my contacts in outlook, except when I exported my contact list I did it as a csv file. Once the contacts are in a file, go to gmail, click on contacts and then the import button. This was a snap.
Was it worth the migration from outllook to exchange?
1. Gmail spam filtering is worth it alone
2. Keyboard commands are a huge productivity booster
3. The archive and search feature beats putting mail in folders
4. The blackberry support is good enough
The only bad thing is that there isn't a way to sync contacts with Gmail and the blackberry. In the end, I'm very happy with switching from Outlook and Exchange to Gmail for our business.
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Comments
How and when will you notify your contacts of your new email address?
Interesting - I have had issues with Outlook and performance and I prefer gmail as well. Thanks for your take!
@gredmondson - with google mail for domains, you can move your domain to use their email servers. So they just host your email under your company or personal domain. This means that your email address stays the same, you just have a different provider hosting it for you.
Good one…
Thanks for sharing
Great information!
BTW, congratulations to you and your wife for your newborn! She´s a beauty :)
I absolutely love gmail! i dont think I could ever go back to outlook!
Maybe its worth sending Google a quick message suggesting the Blackberry/Contacts sync.
If you find the right group Google often will listen to suggestions. I'm guessing you have seen the Google Webmaster group before for example.
Thanks for the info btw : )
Edit* Just had a quick look - this one maybe? http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Users
Wow, great post! I wouldn't have the cahunas to do something like this. This post was very nicely laid out and instructive, and to see/hear someone who's actually doing this is invaluable.
Thank you very much for the info!
I just switch our companies email service to google app. I learned that you have to make a good plan before you start. Setting it up was really easy and I was able to test it before I change my MX records. The great thing is that you can have two servers listed in your MX records until all your contacts and calenders are uploaded in google app. Once that was done, I changed my MX records to have only google server listed. It is crucial to creat all your user accounts before you change your MX records.
Very well written hub .....
very much informative ......
Thank you very much for your great hub, for good advice, good wishes and support. Thanks for sharing your experience with all of us.
I had been searching online when I came across your post. I was watching my wife on her work PC last night (her school district just moved to Google Apps) and thought it looked pretty impressive. It got me thinking, as I currently pay a good amount for an exchange host for my business every month, plus they have a shared RIM setup for real time synching with our blackberry's. I saw your instructions and thought they were helpful. As a Blackberry user though (and I am not all that concerned about synching contacts) I wanted to see if the realtime synchingwas working for you. Meaning, if you delete a message on your blackberry, will it be deleted in Gmail (or outlook if you are using that, as we probably still will).
The gmail application for the blackberry syncs very well. Blackberry has also released some integration with Gmail, but it doesn't sync both ways, so if the syncing is important, go with the Gmail blackberry app http://www.google.com/mobile/products/mail.html#p=
MrMarmalade says:
2 years ago
Great communication
It looks like you are continually looking after us hubbers.
Thank you