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Has anyone had a successful, pain free migration to Google Mail?
Most people discussing the migration of Telus email to Google Mail are coming with questions and/or complaints. This is unnerving as I contemplate initiating the migration. It would be helpful to k...
If we restrict the scope to mail only, then yes, I had a seamless pain free migration from Telus mail to Gmail. I was using Thunderbird and POP3. Incoming mail was downloaded from the Telus server each time I logged in. I very rarely used the Telus Webmail, only when traveling. And if we put aside the risk of having your mail stored on a Google floating barge in a third world country, I am more happy with the Gmail system than the Telus system. I can now access my mail on my phone. I still use Thunderbird and am quite happy with that arrangement. I now use IMAP instead of POP3. That means the mail stays on the Google server (so I can access it from my phone or anywhere I have internet), but Thunderbird mirrors it and downloads a copy of the mail to my home PC where it is saved on my hard drive. Changes made in Thunderbird are immediately also made on the Google server, and vice versa. The only issue I am having is that I occasionally have to resign into Google and enter my password. Not sure what is causing that...
The Calendar is another matter. I was using Thunderbird Lightning. There is an add on for Thunderbird that is supposed to sync a Google Calendar to the Lightning calendar. That did not work and it seemed to be caused by the flavour of the gmail account that Telus created. The add on worked for direct gmail accounts, but not the Telus created account. I finally found a work around with another add on, that simply displays the Google Calendar as a tab in Thunderbird, and does not use Lightning. That seems to work fine.
I don't know what you are using for an e-mail on your computer, but one piece of advice I would give you is to go into the Telus Webmail and download all the mail on their server. If you have an email system that saves your email on your hard drive, then you will have all your old email regardless of what Telus does.
Hope that helps some,
polecat, I am not sure I follow what your concerns are with gmail or Gsuite. I don't know that much about Gmail as it is all new to me. So far what I have done is create a few folders in Thunderbird as was my practice with the former Telus server mail. These show up as folders in Thunderbird and Labels in Gmail. My email handling method is to leave everything in the Inbox until I deal with it by either deleting it or moving it to one of my folders. And I really only do that in Thunderbird. I just use Gmail on my iPhone for convenience when away from my computer and really don't do much in it, other than read an email, or delete it, and occasionally reply. With Thunderbird and IMAP a copy of each email is kept on both the Gmail server, and on my hard drive. More than one Label can be applied to one email in Gmail. In Thunderbird you can only put your email in one folder. Not sure what Thunderbird would do if you applied more than one label to a single email. Have not tried it. In short, Gmail is more powerful, and more complicated in this respect. Thunderbird is simpler, and what I like...
As for the old Telus Webmail, I really don't remember much about it. I only used it a few times a year when traveling.
To be clear, Thunderbird is just an email client software and there is no Thunderbird server that stores your email. You still need an email serveer account like the GSuite one from Telus, or plain old Gmail.
Thanks for the summary. I will use it as the basis for advising some friends on how to prepare for the migration.
As RonAKA says,
"To be clear, Thunderbird is just an email client software and there is no Thunderbird server that stores your email. You still need an email server account like the GSuite one from Telus, or plain old Gmail."
You will NOT have an email address (for example) [email protected] . Mozilla (the company that makes Thunderbird) is not an email service provider. Your email address will still be [email protected] but behind the scenes your mail will be collected on Google servers waiting for you to view and/or download it.
If you install Thunderbird you will be able to download email without looking at the Google Mail site at all. Your password lets Thunderbird speak to Google without actually opening the Google Mail interface in your browser. But the mail is still there in Google and you could still log in to your Google account (the one the migration is forcing you to create) in your browser and see it there. This is no different from the way Telus webmail operated, but it wouldn't have been obvious to you if you never used a 3rd party email client.
Installing Thunderbird lets you hold and control email on your own computer. Note that if you store email on your own computer, you are then responsible for backing it up to someplace safe (an external drive or a paid backup service in the cloud). So, if you try the experiment I proposed and download your existing messages into a POP account it will then be up to you to back them up. They will no longer be on Telus or Google's servers. However, the experiment was only hoping to capture the emails that have not transferred, not any mail going forward. They would be an archive of your old messages, which you said above were important.
When you create the new account in Thunderbird to handle your mail going forward, you will be able to both receive and compose/send messages. I think I am right in saying that if you create this account as a POP account your sent messages will not appear in the browser Google view of you account because your actions are not mirrored in a POP account. If you make it an IMAP account, your sent messages will be mirrored in the Google Mail view in your browser.
NOTE: I know nothing of Apple or Macs, so don't rely on what I've said here if you proceed in that direction. Do your own research.
