Migrating to Google Apps

2012-02-12 1-minute read

There is a nice piece of software called imapsync. Unfortunately, the author decided to stop releasing the package as OpenSource but rather sell it. 42 Euros seemed a tad high for my use case, especially since I’m planning to use this only once.

Luckily, there is still an older version available in the debian archive. A simple ::

sudo apt-get install libmail-imapclient-perl libdate-manip-perl libterm-readkey-perl
sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/imapsync_1.315+dfsg-1_all.deb

will install the dependencies, after which you can simply start the copying process with ::

imapsync \
  --host1 <original imap server> --user1 <girlfriend> --password1 **** \
  --host2 imap.googlemail.com --user2 <girfriend> --password2 **** \
   --ssl1 --ssl2 --useheader 'Message-Id' --skipsize --noauthmd5 \
  --reconnectretry1 1 --reconnectretry2 1

To make sure that the e-mails end up in the right place, you need to run the same command but this time with the following addendum::

imapsync ... \
  --prefix2 '[Gmail]/' --folder 'INBOX.Sent' \
  --regextrans2 's/Sent/Gesendet/'

and

imapsync ... \
  --prefix2 '[Gmail]/' --folder 'INBOX.Drafts' \
  --regextrans2 's/Drafts/Entw&APw-rfe/'

That should be all that’s needed. Please note that this process can take a while!

Further information:

http://www.ducea.com/2010/08/09/howto-migrate-your-email-to-google-apps-over-the-weekend/ (where I got most of my information from)
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Migrating...aspx <http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MigratingAFamilyToGoogleAppsFromGmailThunderbirdOutlookAndOthersTheDefinitiveGuide.aspx>_