Migrating away from Gmail?

goldtop

I've got a business account with Google but I rarely use it for anything more than Gmail (where it connects to an email address on my own domain). I'd like to migrate away, probably to Apple's Mail app on my Macbook (and I am looking into Protonmail).

Of course, I'd like to somehow download my existing emails to the new app.

Anyone successfully done this and got some hints and tips on the best way ahead?

Kittyfrisk

In Mail just go to Mail - add accounts, choose account type & input the details for the existing Gmail account.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mail/mail35803/mac
I access my email using Mail & Gmail & messages are available to view in both apps.
Also  https://pcdots.com/blog/gmail-emails-to-apple-mail/

goldtop

Thanks Kitty. I need to dig into it a bit more, because it's not a fredbloggs@gmail.com email address I use. It's fred@bloggs.com where Gmail signs into the bloggs.com server to pick it up and present it in the normal Gmail way.

If I just add fred@bloggs.com as an account in Mac Mail, I think it'll only get the new unread messages from the bloggs.com domain? 

TimmyO

It depends how you’ve set up Google to retrieve it - if you’ve been using POP3 then yes you’ve been pulling the messages to the Google server and removing them from your email server (where is that hosted?) - but if you’ve set it up as IMAP then Google is just syncing the status of the messages and they’re still on the origin server too 

goldtop

TimmyO said:

It depends how you’ve set up Google to retrieve it - if you’ve been using POP3 then yes you’ve been pulling the messages to the Google server and removing them from your email server (where is that hosted?) - but if you’ve set it up as IMAP then Google is just syncing the status of the messages and they’re still on the origin server too 

Thanks. I will check the details tomorrow, but from memory, I'm pretty certain it's via POP3.

My domain is hosted at Siteground, and at the time I set it up, I gave Google (or G-Suite, whatever it was called at the time) the email account's sign-in details. 

Kittyfrisk

^ Well spotted @TimmyO  I had forgotten to mention the possibility.
POP3 is so much a 20th century technology that frustrates email migration & recovery, that I had assumed that everyone was now using IMAP 
POP3 effectively downloads the email message to the device that is used to read it, rendering it inaccessible to other devices accessing the account. IMAP allows multiple devices to read messages until they are deleted by the user. Much, much better  

oaf

I believe imapsync will do this for you. It should be relatively straightforward and there are many guides online that describe the process.

goldtop

Thanks - something more to read about.

Devil#20

goldtop said:

Thanks - something more to read about.

If you have a domain I'm assuming you use that and forward to the gmail account. Therefore, whoever hosts your registed domain (in my case Ineos) then presumably they've got all your emails on their server. They forward to your gmail. You just use the same email address irrespective of who you use for your email be it gmail, bt, virgin, sky etc. You never change it. 

goldtop

Devil#20 said:

goldtop said:

Thanks - something more to read about.

If you have a domain I'm assuming you use that and forward to the gmail account. Therefore, whoever hosts your registed domain (in my case Ineos) then presumably they've got all your emails on their server. They forward to your gmail. You just use the same email address irrespective of who you use for your email be it gmail, bt, virgin, sky etc. You never change it. 

I'm just digging through the notes I made a few years ago, and I don't think it's that method. 

There was some alteration of the MX records at the domain host, so those MX records now point to google.com subdomains.



I was young(er!) and naive and followed the Google Workspace instructions at the time. It seemed to make sense when I was making more use of Google Drive and other tools.

In other news, the imapsync site appears to be dead!



Maybe Google's AI is trying to stop me from migrating

TTony

If your emails are no longer on your server - ie have been effectively moved to Gmail - then I think you can migrate the content now in Gmail into your Apple Mail account.

Having done that, you can then setup the same Apple Mail account to access all new emails directly from your server, so you've got it all in Apple Mail, albeit within separate folders in Apple Mail.

I *think*


[edit]
Like this
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102061


And then change the mail server back to your original host so it's not being held in GoogleWorld any more.

TimmyO

goldtop said:

Devil#20 said:

goldtop said:

Thanks - something more to read about.

If you have a domain I'm assuming you use that and forward to the gmail account. Therefore, whoever hosts your registed domain (in my case Ineos) then presumably they've got all your emails on their server. They forward to your gmail. You just use the same email address irrespective of who you use for your email be it gmail, bt, virgin, sky etc. You never change it. 

I'm just digging through the notes I made a few years ago, and I don't think it's that method. 

There was some alteration of the MX records at the domain host, so those MX records now point to google.com subdomains.



I was young(er!) and naive and followed the Google Workspace instructions at the time. It seemed to make sense when I was making more use of Google Drive and other tools.

In other news, the imapsync site appears to be dead!



Maybe Google's AI is trying to stop me from migrating

Oh hang in then - it sounds like googles mail servers are fully managing your email then - not just grabbing it from siteground. 

If that’s the case you’ve effectively got a Google mail account on Google workspace - if that’s the case then you should be able to just go in to mail app and add an account and choose Google as the account type and Mail app will use imap to mirror/sync the email.

(this assumes you’re happy continuing to pay for the Google workspace account) 

Snags

As others have said, Google is your mail host, which is entirely normal for a Workplaces setup.

If you're looking to ditch Workplaces entirely you will need to first retrieve your email from Google (just connect to it, but make sure you are caching the full mailbox locally otherwise you risk losing items when you kill the service).

Then you will need to arrange a new mail host somewhere else, change the MX at wherever your DNS is hosted (might be Siteground, might be Google, check your nameserver settings - if it's been put into Workplaces you'll also need to move the nameservers somewhere else, likely back to Siteground).

When your NS are off Google and you have a new MX ready, update the MX record, run old server settings for 24 hours them switch your client to the new one. 

Tannin

Kittyfrisk said:

^ Well spotted @TimmyO  I had forgotten to mention the possibility.
POP3 is so much a 20th century technology that frustrates email migration & recovery, that I had assumed that everyone was now using IMAP 
POP3 effectively downloads the email message to the device that is used to read it, rendering it inaccessible to other devices accessing the account. IMAP allows multiple devices to read messages until they are deleted by the user. Much, much better  

POP is indeed much, much better.

Properly managed, POP makes migration and management and recovery magnificently easy.  Provided only that you are happy with a single master copy of your mail - which for most individual people (as opposed to corporates) is just fine - you can back up, restore, recover, migrate, and reconfigure exactly as you like. You are never, ever, ever beholden to a third party who holds your mail - or (worse!) screws it up. Your mail is never held for any length of time on a remote server not belonging to you, it is never, ever hosted in a foreign country, and no matter what kind of demented arseholes operate your hosting company, the very worst thing that can possibly happen is that you have to switch to a different hosting company, which takes 10 minutes of your time and a day or two to implement. You retain100% of your own data.

It doesn't matter if they screw you over, go broke and out of business, get blown up by a terrorist bomb, change their terms of service such that their system is no longer usable, quadruple their prices, turn out to be hopeless incompetents, go under to a ransomware attack, fail to back up their server and lose your account  .... no matter what they do, the worst case is that you sack them, switch to someone better, and possibly lose a single day's worth of messages. Absolute worst case. 

POP. You have 100% control over your own mail going back as many decades as you care to retain it. YOU have physical custody of the media. No-one else. Simple, practical, bulletproof data security - no mess, no fuss, no side effects.

Is it stone age technology? Too right it is! It is so stone age that it actually works exactly as designed.

TimmyO

For the majority of people, them having the responsibility for and the only copy of that data is as far from “simple practical bullet proof data security” as you’ll get.

If you’re savvy enough to properly DIY then that’s great, but it’s not the advice I’d give to most people. 

Tannin

^ Nonsense.

If they are not competent to back up their data, they are not competent to own a computer. That is all they need to be able to do: make regular backups. I used to teach people how to do that as routine  when they bought a computer. I don't think any of them were incapable of doing that after 10 minutes tuition. (Something I never charged for.) (Well, OK, I can think of two or three who couldn't manage it. But they were the sort who also struggles with shoelaces.) 

If they came to me (or any other competent tech) with an intact backup, I could get them up and running again in short order. 

And of course, many were perfectly capable of doing that stuff for themselves. 

TimmyO

You do you mate.

idiotwindow

POP is hopeless as soon as you start to use more than one device regularly and want to reference old emails (especially sent emails). IMAP doesn't preclude having "physical custody" of your email archive. You can easily create an offline archive of all your IMAP mail if you are paranoid about Google or Apple going out of business.

goldtop

Lots to catch up on. Thanks, all.

I'm not wedded to POP3, but it was simpler to understand when I was deciding several years ago. FWIW, I do not use my phone/etc to read/write emails, so being locked into a local mail database on a Mac/PC wasn't a problem.

goldtop

And the plan is to leave Google Workspace or whatever it is that they call G Suite. I used that for a while, but then dropped the productivity stuff, the Drive, etc. So now there's just Gmail, a small-footprint Youtube channel and some not-well-planned Chrome-based password management.

TimmyO

What makes you think you’re using pop3? 

How do you access the email currently - only on the gmail website or via mobile devices and/or mail apps on a computer too?