Comments on Strategize: Gmail account consolidation

Yes, absolutely -- see the instructions here abou...

2007-05-07T21:00:18.003-06:00

Yes, absolutely -- see the instructions here about how to use MailTraq to set up a POP server. Basically you can use whatever software you can get your hands on to set up a POP server and use Mail Fetcher to retrieve the e-mail to keep all of the date and time information intact. Bear in mind that Gmail only retrieves e-mails via POP in groups of 200, so you'll need to ensure that your domain remains the same (depending on the number of e-mails you are POPing in) -- you may want to consider using no-ip.

Ross

At this point, the only method for retaining the o...

2007-05-07T20:39:00.000-06:00

At this point, the only method for retaining the original date is to use the Gmail Mail Fetcher feature (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21288)

Mail Fetcher is great provided that you have POP access to the account from which you want to pull the e-mails.

If you have the mails on your own computer, can't you set up a POP server and have Mail Fetcher download them from that?

Please let me know how you did this! I have set up...

2007-03-25T17:46:00.000-06:00

Please let me know how you did this! I have set up mailtraq.

Importing mbox messages was very easy! just select:
Tools->Message Import Wizard
and it goes.

I started the pop service running and tested thunderbird to be sure it worked. No problems there.

I turned windows firewall off, and set the port forwarding on my router to map port 110 to my pc.

Then I tried pointing Gmail's Mail Fetcher at my IP address (my network operates through my router's IP, so that's what I used for the POP server address), port 110, and the name and password I set in mailtraq.

Mail Fetcher just comes back with, "There was a problem connecting to 71-215-92-xxx.hlrn.qwest.net" (last digits removed)

A link underneath reads "Show Error Details"; clicking it replaces it with the text:
Server returned error: "Connection timed out"

That's all gmail will tell me about the problem. Is there something I forgot to do? Anyone with an knack for network setup know what to do here?

That's pretty interesting. You wouldn't be intere...

2007-03-13T10:43:36.089-06:00

That's pretty interesting. You wouldn't be interested in sharing some more detailed instructions on how you got Mailtraq to work, would you?

Let me know.

Ross

I set up a mailtraq server on my machine this week...

2007-03-12T12:02:00.000-06:00

I set up a mailtraq server on my machine this weekend. After doing an import of my thunderbird mbox into mailtraq, I was able to add the mailbox as a pop account to check through the gmail settings, and over the weekend gmail periodically downloaded 200 messages at a time from my server. All the timestamps are perfect and even the sent mail is sorted into the correct folder. Thanks for your guide!

No worries.The only other method that I've been ab...

2007-03-08T15:20:51.632-07:00

No worries.

The only other method that I've been able to think of would be to get all of the e-mail into .msg files and use one of those Gmail hard drive applications to load them into the Gmail account. This presumes that Gmail would be able to easily read and understand the .msg file, which the link you provided seems to suggest. Furthermore, this assumes that the virtual hard drive software doesn't do anything goofy to the files that you upload.

Obviously I haven't had a chance to even try to test this solution, but I do know that gDisk is the popular Mac client and Gmail Drive is the popular Windows client. Actually, after doing a little searching there is actually a Thunderbird add-on that provides many of the same features of the aforementioned pieces of software, which might facilitate dragging and dropping individual e-mails.

My guess would be that the virtual disk software uses some sort of unique sender ID for each file (evidenced by the fact that all of the software providers suggest making a filter) and puts metadata into the subject line in order to create the file system.

It seems like someone that understands enough about how to load non-email into Gmail to use it as a hard drive could figure out a way to load in compatible single message files, but that person is not me.

Ross

I apologize for the harshness of my comment, as at...

2007-03-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the harshness of my comment, as at the time I posted it I was quite frustrated (and maybe a little tipsy :P). Anyways, I found this post on askmetafilter (through lifehacker.com) that looks promising, though I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. At the moment I have all my emails from my old gmail account just incubating in thunderbird, so I hopefully will get around to doing this over the weekend.

How do you get mail in "mbox" fomat into Gmail via pop?

Calavera,I moderate my comments due to comment spa...

2007-03-08T07:42:35.691-07:00

Calavera,

I moderate my comments due to comment spam and I publish any comment provided that it is not a blatant advertisement and it is applicable to the original post.

The reason that I have not published a method to preserve the original dates is because the method that I originally thought would work does not -- another person that read this post was interested enough to try it out for me. Here's what it consists of:

# Download Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird )

# Download the Mailredirect extension for Thunderbird (http://mailredirect.mozdev.org/)

# Config your Gmail account to allow all your messages to be retrieved via POP

# Launch Thunderbird and install the Mailredirect extension (Tools -> Extensions -> Install)

# Restart Thunderbird and config it to access Gmail via POP (you'll also need to add the SMTP settings)

# POP into your Gmail account and retrieve all of your messages

# Select all of the messages and then select Mailredirect from the "Messages" menu

# Input the address you want the e-mails redirected to, and if everything works correctly, all of the mail should be sent to your Gmail account with all of the original information, including the dates, intact; there also should be no "FWD:" appended to the messages as the Mailredirect app is performing a straight bounce operation.

The problem with the method described above is that you get exactly the same result as you do with the Gexodus solution: Gmail tags each message with the date and time that it is received into the Gmail system and does not preserve the original date.

At this point, the only method for retaining the original date is to use the Gmail Mail Fetcher feature (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21288)

Mail Fetcher is great provided that you have POP access to the account from which you want to pull the e-mails. Unfortunately in many Exchange environments administrators do not allow POP access for security reasons, so if you are in that particular situation, you may not be able to preserve the original dates.

I'll continue to search for a solution that allows the population of e-mail into a Gmail account that preserves the original date, but at this point the only solution that I've found is Mail Fetcher.

Good luck!

Ross

did you forget to post your instructions on how to...

2007-03-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

did you forget to post your instructions on how to preserve the original dates? Or did you just never figure it out, so, embarrassed, you just don't approve comments that ask about it?

Thanks for the instructions! Simple enough, but I...

2007-03-07T17:41:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the instructions! Simple enough, but I never would have figured it out on my own.

You rock! I included a kudos to you in my blog.

My pleasure. I'll actually be posting some instru...

2007-02-04T11:43:17.064-07:00

My pleasure. I'll actually be posting some instructions in the next week or so on how to eliminate the use of Gexodus from the process and preserve the original dates on your e-mails when you populate them back into Gmail.

Just wanted to say thanks! I was looking all over...

2007-02-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to say thanks! I was looking all over for a way to do this and your technique worked like a charm.