for Archive
Have too many emails scatter around desktop email clients on local
disk? The mails which downloaded and retrieved from POP3 mail server
using program such as Outlook 2003/2007, Outlook Express, Netscape,
Windows Vista Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Pegasus, Eudora or others,
are stored and kept on local hard drive. E-mail messages stored in the
e-mail client mailboxes can be read and browse offline and organize
into folders using client's database file.
However, over the time, the data files , such as Outlook Personal
Folders data file .PST or mBox used in Eudora and Thunderbird will
grow very big, making the client program less responsive. Beside, the
locally stored emails and old mails archive also prone to high risk of
accidental lost such as when hard disk crashes, or when
reformatting/reinstalling operating system. Thus if your email
messages is important to you for future reference or sweet memories,
backup the mails somewhere else especially on a medium that is easily
accessible is a must.
Archive and backup the mails by uploading and importing the mails into
Gmail server is a good choice. Gmail now has over 4GB of storage
space, enough for thousands if not millions of e-mails. What most
important is that mails kept on Gmail is in safe hand. You can easily
access the mails via web interface and free IMAP or POP3 support. And
Google, provider of Gmail is reliable and unlikely to go bust or
bankrupt in the foreseeable future, causing you have to move entire
email archive stored in Gmail elsewhere again. Beside, users can also
enjoy other features and benefits of Gmail, such as labeling of email
messages instead of storing into folders and powerful quick mail
search.
However, Gmail does not provide a way or feature to upload email into
it. Previously, those people who wants to import existing mail
messages into Gmail has to depend on Google GMail Loader (GML)
provided by marklyon.org to upload old emails currently exists in
local mail client. However, the mail loading to Gmail process is
reliable, and often terminated halfway. Beside, only certain email
clients with mBox, MailDir, MMDF, MH, and Babyl format. Those using
Microsoft Outlook with .PST format or Outlook Express will have to
convert or export the emails to mBox data file format. There are also
other issues such as non working SMTP server, modified sender name,
and timestamp of emails when viewed in Inbox or All Mail is not the
original date and time the mails were received, but the time when the
uploaded messages were received by Google server.
Now there is a very simply trick to import and upload existing old
email messages into Gmail without hassle and problems mentioned above.
The trick is to make sure of free IMAP access provided by Gmail. Any
email client that supports configuration of multiple email accounts
can upload emails to Gmail.
To import and upload existing emails to Gmail, firstly IMAP support
must be enabled in Gmail. You can enable IMAP for Gmail by selecting
Enable IMAP in
Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab of Gmail Settings page. Then, open up the
mail client you currently use to download and read emails. Inside the
mail client, configure additional account for Gmail using IMAP
protocol. Gmail Help provides guide on how to configure IMAP based
Gmail access on some popular email clients.
Once IMAP accessed Gmail is configured, an additional IMAP folder for
these Gmail IMAP account will be displayed on folders list or mail
items list. To import and upload your existing mails to Gmail, simply
drag and drop, or copy and paste (or cut and paste) if you no longer
want the mails to have a copy in your local folders to Gmail's Inbox
folder in the new IMAP account in the mail client. Your email client
may be hanged or not resposive while uploading, and the importing
process may take a while to complete.
Once uploaded, the Gmail IMAP folder in email client will immediately
synchronize and reflect the changes, and you can also verify the
emails have been safely uploaded and imported into Gmail for backup or
archive storage by visiting Gmail web user interface.
You can also move the email messages to a sub-folder under Gmail IMAP
folder to automatically skip Gmail Inbox and archive it, but also
applying a label to the email messages uploaded. You can also apply
multiple labels to mail messages
by simply copy the mails to many sub-folders.
Note that above trick only works on existing email messages currently
reside in local mailboxes of email client, which has been downloaded
from POP3 mail server, or can be accessed via IMAP or HTTP in case of
Windows Live Hotmail (aka MSN Hotmail). If you are using webmail
interface to access your email, and want to transfer the mails to
Gmail, you can skip all these steps by making use of Gmail's free Mail
Fetcher function, provided your webmail service provider has POP3
access. Mail Fetcher allows users to directly import mail from a POP3
supported email service into GMail.
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Regards.
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