This page gives some ideas on how to move your email from the old Roadfly email server to Google’s Gmail servers. Unfortunately there aren’t any bulk upload tools that allow us to do this for you. It isn’t very difficult but it is time consuming and the methods will vary depending on your computer and the type of email software you use.
Important: Before you begin any effort to migrate your old email you should go through your old email and empty any junk, spam, or trash mailboxes. You should also browse your sent mail and INBOX and determine whether you need all those messages. Moving emails takes exponentially more time if your email account is holding a lot of very large attachments and thousands of emails nested in various folders.
Clean your old email account first!
One method is to forward old email messages to yourself. Open an email in the old system and email it to yourself @ roadfly. (I think this will work but I’m not sure since we haven’t actually made the change yet.)
If you’re on Windows you can try the following upload tool provided by Google. I have never tried it so your mileage may vary. Google email uploader for Windows. The email uploader is supposed to provide a method for you to upload your email from your PC to Gmail. If you want to use the Google email uploader try searching on Google first. There are plenty of web pages written about it which offer helpful hints.
The way I did it in Apple Mail was to setup my email as though it was two separate accounts. The settings are completely different for each service so your email client won’t get confused. The only thing that is the same is the email username.
1. With the old server set to charlie@216.177.56.22 (old Roadfly server) I drag ‘n drop emails to charlie@roadfly.com (hosted Gmail) from charlie@216.177.56.22 (old Roadfly server). I use the IP address of the old email server rather than the roadfly.com domain name. I use the same old server IP address for both incoming and outgoing IMAP and SMTP servers when I setup/change my old account settings.
2. Add Roadfly hosted Gmail to my email client as per the appropriate instructions in the FAQ.
Once the two accounts are setup I can just drag and drop between the two accounts. Very simple but a little time consuming if you have a ton of email like I do.
Here are instructions on setting up Apple Mail to use Gmail.
There are many variations of the drag ‘n drop method. This page offers a similar method to mine. Guide to importing archived email into Gmail.
Keep in mind since Roadfly is moving email servers and systems but keeping the same email address some of the techniques you’ll find while searching Google will need to be modified.
Finally… if the above methods don’t suit you try searching Google. There are dozens of web pages written about migrating email from legacy email systems over to Gmail.
Also, don’t forget to cut ‘n paste entries from your Roadfly contacts/address book over to your Roadfly Gmail account if your address book wasn’t copied over with one of the migration tools.
Feel free to write comments below if you have some helpful ideas.