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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,
My emails transferred over, but not my contacts, notes or calendar.
Also I cannot set up telus email in Outlook 365 on my laptop
For those having apparent issues with contacts, my experience might be of use. Google annoyingly has Contacts as an app unto itself, which you have to pick from the Apps grid. After conversion, my contacts weren't visible in that app. However, when I tried to compose a new message and entered the beginnings of a contact/addressee, I was presented with the pick list with the appropriate contacts listed. That was evidence that they made it through the migration. Coincidentally, a friend mentioned that her apparent problems with the migration had resolved when she shut down her computer that night and started up the next day. Behold, the contacts were now listed in the Contacts app. So, I tried the same thing. I shut down and rebooted, and the Contacts appeared in the Contacts app.
This note may be too late to solve some people's frustration, but it might be of use to others.
Yes, with Google, mail, contacts, and the calendar are all separate apps. I don't particularly like that aspect, but I guess they must do it to keep the app size down?? That was what I like about Thunderbird. It had all functions in the one program. I pretty much have it back to that state, but it is a bit more complicated with Google and my iPhone in the picture. I now have Thunderbird contacts, Google Contacts, iPhone Contacts, and Ooma Contacts (VOIP) that I am trying to keep all in sync. It is still a bit of a work in progress... I guess what I have gained in this whole forced migration to Google is that I now have mail and a calendar on my iPhone.
