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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,
Dear Telus Google migration team,
I would have been great to know about this before I did the migration: https://support.google.com/a/answer/7044710
If I'm understanding you correctly, they did tell you. Or at least they tried.
One of the emails they sent you pointed you to
Migration Day Checklist
https://www.telus.com/en/bc/support/article/day-one-checklist-google-email
Under the heading Steps to activate your TELUS email powered by Google, Step 2 is:
- Important: If presented with the screen below, the steps in this page will not help you set up your email. Please consult this other checklist instead: Migration day checklist for Google users
The screen they illustrate is the one that would have let you select your personal Google account that used the Telus address as your account ID and sent you off on a different path to the migration: Migration day checklist for Google users
https://www.telus.com/en/bc/support/article/migration-day-checklist-google-users
Step 3 on the Checklist page reads
3. If you don’t see the "Choose an account" screen, you will be asked to enter your password.
To me, that "If you don’t see ..." is a flag to go back and double check the previous step to be sure I got it right.
I am posting this based on my understanding of what you described. Are you saying that you followed the process for the Migration for Google users and it wiped your existing Google account anyway? If so, it's no wonder you are upset!
@essjay1 thank you for your concern, but no, I am not pissed. And my Google account is safe and sound and now switched over to a non-Telus email account. It was a hassle, and my point of posting was that it would have been much easier to switch the account before signing up for a migration appointment. Having it on the migration day checklist was too late, the conflict already existed once Telus created the new account.
Anyway, all good. And the best part was this proded me along enough to dump my Telus email from anything important so I don't get stuck again if they change something else. Or if Telus email goes down for an extended period (not that that would ever happen right?).
So, in summary, if you have a Google device which uses a Telus.net email for log-in, switch it to something else before you sign up for the migration. You can always switch it back afterwards but it will be tied to the Google account managed by Telus, which is not something I was willing to risk.
- Good response! I tried to log in to the Telus Neighbourhood and I now get this message:
"You are not allowed to access this site
We're sorry, but you have been banned from using this site."
Telus does not appreciate customer criticizing their indifference and incompetence.JohnOldislander We are customers only on this site. If you look around you will see that the site is having a technical issue that has been on going for a week or more. I was blocked out for a number of days. Our admins will respond to issues that need attention and give direction. Everyone got that message chill out.
