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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,
I have no idea what Thunderbird or some of the other things that people are talking about....I am not a technician.
Oldislander Speaking from a PC and Windows perspective, Thunderbird and Outlook and Windows Mail are applications (called "email clients") that allow you to download email from Telus or Google's servers to your own computer's hard drive to view, read, reply, organize, and store. You download directly and view in your application rather than viewing through a web browser. They are called 3rd party apps because they are built and updated by Mozilla and Microsoft, not by Telus or Google. (Telus and Google are the first parties, you are the second party (I think), Mozilla and Microsoft are the 3rd parties.)
Here is Thunderbird's website, but it does assume you understand how an email client works, as distinct from webmail. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/
Here is a page that is a reasonably general explanation of the difference. Most of the explanations I found were quite technical. https://difference.guru/difference-between-an-email-client-and-webmail/ (The video is not great.)
Thanks for the detailed information. I am thinking of trying Thunderbird for use on my iMac as I am not a fan of Gmail; even with mailboxes, it would not by my second choice after Telus.
Sorry. The previous post got away from me. As I was saying:
The settings that Thunderbird filled in for me during the test are:
Protocol: POP3
Server: pop.telus.net (This is for incoming mail.)
Port: 995
SSL: SSL/TLS
Authentication: Kerberos/GSSAPI
Username:
To complete setting up the account, even though you won't actually be using it, you will need to include the settings for sending mail. They are:
Protocol: SMTP
Server: smtp.telus.net
Port: 465
SSL: SSL/TLS
Authentication: Normal password
Username.
If you press the Test or Re-test button, Tbird should tell you that the configuration is recognized by the server. Now, whether or not a Checking Mail will work is another question. Especially since you want it to capture mailbox folder names as well as messages.
The settings should work for Outlook or Windows Mail if you already have them. The whole experiment is just that, but if it works it will give you copies of your messages that you can refer to even if Telus never gets your migration to Google sorted.
Good luck. Let us know what happens.
I don't understand how you can see your mailboxes in Telus webmail without being logged in. When you say you can't log in, are you talking about Telus webmail?
It seems to me that if the mailboxes are still with Telus then they must be on Telus's servers and not yet on Google's. If what you crucially want to achieve is to have copies of your old messages, then it might be worth the experiment to see if you can download them to a 3rd party client. And it would be an experiment that might fail.
If you have Windows and/or Microsoft Office, you already have either Outlook or Windows Mail in one of their various versions. Or you could download, install, and use Thunderbird.
I just tried creating a new POP account in Tbird. Tbird can do that either automatically or manually. When I chose the automatic route it filled in the settings for incoming mail with pop.gmail.com, which is not what we want. When I changed to select Manual Configuration I could change the incoming mail setting to pop.telus.net, which is the one we want to test. When I chose the "re-test" button, it confirmed that the settings were workable, although I did not go so far as to download any of my mail into an account that I don't actually want.
The settings that Thunderbird filled in for me during the test are:
Protocol:
- They are still on my Telus mail. But I need them in Gmail to store and save similar mail that I do not want to lose...like banking.
- I contacted Telus and they were having a problem with the transition. They were going to do it "by hand" over a week ago and I have not heard from them and the mailboxes are still in Telus instead of Gmail where they belong.
Oldislander What site are you seeing these mailboxes and if you see them can you open them up.
Oldislander said "I can not log in or send mail or receive but all of my Mailboxes are sitting there"
If you cannot log in, I suspect you could not download those mailboxes with Thunderbird, because Thunderbird needs to log in to get them. However, if they still exist, Telus should be able to move them to your new Google mail.
Oldislander Can you open them and read them. I printed some important ones needed the numbers. The rest i don't care. Polecat
- I can not log in or send mail or receive but all of my Mailboxes are sitting there.
Oldislander Can you still access telus webmail i can't. Polecat
- It is the Telus mail that we have had for decades...until Telus decided to force all of its customers to switch to Gmail. I receive my new mail in Gmail but all of my Mailboxes and Drafts are still in Telus, which I have kept. I guess that would be "webmail"!
Oldislander My move to gsuite took 6 hours lap desk and ipad. I had to have a tech do it if i tryed it ran me in a constant loop. I knew there was lots of trouble so printed the important saved emails and also my contacts. My emails in saved folders did not arrive and they can't help me. The contacts did arrive. Not impressed. Polecat
When you say you have the mailboxes and drafts (saved mail) is still on Telus and on your computer, what format is the mail in? Is it in Outlook? or what application. The only Telus mail I knew about was WebMail.
- Everything, I believe, except the Mailboxes with years of saved mail and Drafts, is on Gmail. The Mailboxes and Drafts (Saved Mail) are still on Telus, which I still have on my computer.
Thunderbird has the ability to download mail from the Telus Webmail or from the new Google Mail. But, if you don't know where the mail has gone then there is no starting point.
- The migration did not work very well. We are missing our Mailboxes and Telus does not appear to have the ability to help. Hence, my posts here. I am not a big fan of Gmail. I have an account on my laptop and I rarely use it.
Personally, I would stay away from Outlook. Where are you now with your migration? Is all your mail now in Gmail? Or?
- If I download Outlook, can I transfer my saved Telus mailboxes to it?
