Gmail Adds Email Import option for third-party email providers
One of the things that many users like about Google's email service Gmail is that Google improves the service constantly by adding new functionality to it.
Users get to test tools published to Gmail Labs all the time, and new features are added regularly.
One of those new features is the ability to import emails from other popular email providers such as Yahoo Mail, Windows Live or AOL but also any email account that supports POP3.
There have been workarounds to accomplish that like the one offered by the excellent gExodus email importer for the Windows operating system. It allowed you to import mailboxes into Gmail so that you could access the emails on Google's platform.
Importing in this context means that any email or contact of the selected email account becomes available under the Gmail account. It has no impact on future emails or contacts (other than a single option to continue importing emails for the next 30 day period).
Gmail: Import email accounts
The new email import feature is not yet available for all Gmail accounts but will be added to all of them over time. New Gmail accounts on the other hand do have the email import feature enabled already.
Interested Gmail users find the email import option in the Gmail account settings which you can open if you click on this link. If you prefer the manual route, open Gmail, sign in to your account, click on the preferences icon at the top right, and select settings from the context menu that opens up.
Locate the Accounts and Imports link on the page and click on it. It lists many different settings that you can change, and among them the option to import mail and contacts from other providers.
The page lists Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and AOL specifically as well as providers supporting POP3 connections, and other webmail providers (without mentioning any names).
When you click on the import mail and contacts link there, a new window opens up that walks you through the process. You are asked to enter the email address you want to import mails from in the first step, and then your account password as it is the only way to import messages and contacts after all.
Options are displayed to define what is being imported and what not. You can import contacts, mail, new mail that arrives in the next 30 days, and also add a label to emails flagged as important. You don't have to keep all options enabled. If you just want to import contacts for instance, you can do so right there.
Being able to import emails to Gmail is another feature of Gmail that is poised to become popular as soon as it is activated for all Gmail accounts.
Verdict
It is quite handy if you want to migrate an email account to Google's mail service, or have access to all of your emails regardless of account on a single website.
Imported emails are displayed under inbox on the left side of the main Gmail interface. Folders that you may have used previously are automatically turned into labels during the migration so that you can access them as well just like before.
You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!