Transferring an old Gmail email archive to your new gov.uk mailbox

Transferring an old Gmail email archive to your new gov.uk mailbox

Overview

When moving to a new gov.uk mailbox with Parish Online you may feel lost without your historic archive of emails.
Fortunately there's a process for sucking up that email archive and storing it in your new gov.uk mailbox.

This tutorial will guide you through the process.

Set up Gmail ready for the transfer

There are a few things you'll need to do before you can bring your Gmail archive into your new gov.uk mailbox;
  1. Enable Two Factor Authentication for your Gmail account. Here's a tutorial from Google: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185839
  2. Enable IMAP.

    1. Sign in to your Gmail account by using a browser that is supported (Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari).

    2. Choose or click the gear icon (Choose the Gmail gear icon.) on the top right.

    3. Choose Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP.

    4. Select Enable IMAP, and then choose Save Changes.

  3. Create an App Password for your Gmail account. Here's a tutorial from Google: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/kb/how-to-create-app-passwords-000009237


Alert
Note that as we have no control over Gmail, Google or their services and support, these steps aren't something we can do for you.


Things you will need

  1. Your Gmail address.
  2. The App Password you generated in the previous section.

Things you should check

  1. How much storage is your Gmail using up? Parish Online gov.uk mailboxes have 5GB of storage each. If you need more Parish Online can apply more to your account for a small fee. If you don't want to pay extra, now is a good time to have a bit of a spring clean. Check your sent items, check for large attachments, and delete items in your Trash folder.

Method 1 - Get Parish Online to do it

If you've used up all the hours in your week and can't face tackling this, send the details you've collected from the previous section and send it all to Parish Online. We'll happily set this all up for you.

Method 2 - Use the Email Admin Panel to do it

  1. Log into your email Admin Panel: https://mailadmin.zoho.eu
    1. Use your normal clerk email address and password
  2. Go to Data Migration
  3. Click Start Data Migration
  4. Give it a name e.g. "Transfer from Old Provider"
  5. Select IMAP as the protocol
  6. Check the Gmail button
  7. Leave the rest and click Add
  8. On the next page, leave everything as-is, click Add
  9. On the next page, set the storage limit to 95% and click Create
  10. Click the Users tab (the one near the top in the middle, not the one in the left main menu)
  11. Click Add and enter:
    1. the old email address, e.g. councillor.bob@gmail.com
    2. the App Password generated earlier
    3. the new email address. e.g. councillor.bob@mappington.gov.uk
  12. Click Start Migration
This will then churn away and port over your old emails. It may take up to 24 hours to complete depending on how many emails you have.

You can close the Mail Admin Panel tab and even shut down your computer if necessary, the process will continue no matter what.