Export emails from desktop clients into Gmail

So you’ve made up your mind: you’re finally ditching that old email desktop client and switching to Gmail. Congratulations! But first of all, you still need to solve a major issue: how to move all your old emails from the desktop client to Gmail. Fortunately the guys over at Google also thought about that, and came up with a smart solution: Google Email Uploader, a handy app that extracts email messages and contacts from popular desktop clients and imports them into Gmail.

Google Email Uploader works with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird. It has also one main requirement: a Google Apps account – meaning it won’t work with regular Gmail accounts, but only with those email accounts that belong to another domain name but are managed via Google Mail.

If you meet both conditions, you’re ready for the move. Close your email client, launch Google Email Uploader and follow the step by step instructions. You’ll be able to choose between importing all the items in your old desktop client or selecting specific folders.

Google Email Uploader includes also a couple of handy configuration options. One is the ability to create Gmail labels according to the name of the folders you’re importing, and the other lets you send all the imported messages right to Gmail’s archive; they won’t appear in your inbox, but will still be searchable.

Google Email Uploader works like a breeze and is available for both Windows and Mac. It’s the perfect solution to switch to Gmail without losing data on the way.