How To Transfer IMAP Messages
If you want to move email from one email account to another OR from one email host to another, please follow these instructions:
1. You will need to use an email client like Outlook or the free Thunderbird program. Go ahead and open/install it to get ready for step #2
2. Go ahead and setup an email profile for your legacy email account and select to use a POP or POP3 connection. This method of connection will download the actual emails and folders to your computer so that the emails are stored locally instead of on the server. Go ahead and connect and download all of your emails to your computer
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(note: if you have folders that you can not see when you connect to the email account using a POP connection this is because those folders are IMAP folders and can not be viewed by a POP connection, the solution for this is to login to your email account via your Webmail.domain.com address and move all the emails in these folders into the inbox, then continue to download them) |
3. Once you have downloaded all of the emails onto your computer, you will want to move all of the emails into a folder that you create, call it what ever you like.
4. Once you have moved all of the emails into a newly created folder on your email program on your computer, make sure you have all of the email you need.
5. Once you have recreated the email profile for your new account, you will edit your email connection settings on your email program on your computer to connect to this new email account via IMAP
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(note: IMAP and POP use the same login info, you just need to change the connection type) |
6. Once the email program is connected to the new email account you created you can simply transfer the emails that you stored in that temporary folder you created, into your inbox folder... the IMAP connection will then synchronize your email programs inbox with the inbox of the email account and that is it, your emails are now transferred to the new email account. You can then organize your emails into separate folders if you wish.
Note that if your legacy email service is IMAP, you could create 2 separate account profiles for both the legacy account and your new account. You could then login to your legacy account via IMAP which will show all of your files and folders, then you could simply drag each folder of messages from your legacy IMAP account to your new IMAP account and your email client will essentially download, then upload the folders between the 2 servers.