Skip to content

Migrate Data to Google Workspace

Info

This page provides step-by-step instructions (with screenshots) on how to setup Google Workspace for your domains, and is the companion of my Migrating to Google Workspace: Solving Email Routing Challenge blog post

Migrate Gmail

Forward incoming email 1
  1. In the "old" Gmail, go to Settings > See all settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP
  2. In the Forwarding section, click Add a forwarding address and enter the email address you want to forward messages to
  3. Click Next > Proceed > OK
  4. In the "new" Gmail (recipient of the forwarding): A verification message will be sent to that address. Click the verification link in that message
  5. In the "old" Gmail, go back to go to Settings > See all settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP and refresh the page
  6. In the Forwarding section, select Forward a copy of incoming mail to and choose what you want to happen with the Gmail copy of your emails (Archive)
  7. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes
Enable IMAP 2
  1. In the "old" Gmail, go to Settings > See all settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP
  2. In the IMAP Access section, select Enable IMAP
  3. Under Folder size limits, select Do not limit the number of messages in an IMAP folder (default)
  4. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes
  5. Still in the "old" Gmail, go to Settings > Labels, and make sure that any label that needs to be migrated has the Show in IMAP box checked
Start migration 3 4 5 6 7
  1. In the Google Workspace Admin Console, go to Menu > Account > Data Migration and click Set Up Data Migration
  2. As Migration Source select Gmail, then click Start
  3. As Migration Start Date choose a start date for the migration (you can check in the old Gmail the date of the oldest email you want to migrate)
  4. As Migration Options decide whether to exclude some data
  5. Next, click Select Users > Add user
  6. As Source Email, enter the old Gmail address
  7. Click Authorize
    • Sign into the old Gmail account
    • Review the request for permission to view and manage your mail and click Allow

    Un-enrol from Advanced Protection

    • If the old Gmail account is enrolled in Advanced Protection, you won't be able to authorize the migration
    • So, you'll have to un-enrol first, and then re-enrol after the migration is complete
  8. As Google Workspace Email, enter the new Google Workspace email address
  9. Click Start
Monitor progress 8
  1. At the beginning, the migration status will be Initialising
  2. After a while (few days, depending on the amount of data), the migration status will reach 99%
  3. It will get stuck at 99% for a while: it is normal (as confirmed by Google Support), just wait for it to complete
Verify migration result
  1. Download the migration report and look for errors
  2. Compare the total email count between the old and the new Gmail
  3. Check emails without labels: -has:nouserlabels -has:userlabels
Manually migrate stars, filters, signatures, and other settings
  1. Ensure label tree is preserved and re-assign colors to labels
  2. Re-add stars to emails
  3. Copy filters
  4. Copy signatures
  5. Copy global settings

Migrate Contacts

Export existing Gmail contacts 9
  1. Google doesn't offer an automated migration tool for contacts 5
  2. In the old account, go to Google Contacts
  3. At the top right, click the Export icon
  4. Select which contacts to export (all) and export as Google CSV
Import the CSV file into the new account 9
  1. In the new account, go to Google Contacts
  2. On the left sidebar, click Import
  3. Select the CSV file and click Import
Verify migration result
  1. Compare the total contact count between the old and the new Gmail
  2. Check contacts count per label
  3. Cleanup unused contacts

Migrate Calendars

Export events 10 11
  1. Google doesn't offer an automated migration tool for contacts 5
  2. In the old account, go to Google Calendar
  3. On the left side of the page, find the My calendars section
  4. Point to the calendar you want to export, click More > Settings and sharing
  5. Under Calendar settings, click Export calendar
  6. An ICS file of your events will start to download
Import events 10
  1. In the new account, go to Google Calendar
  2. In the top right, click Settings > Settings
  3. In the menu on the left, click Import & Export
  4. Click Select file from your computer and select the file you exported
  5. Choose which calendar to add the imported events to
  6. Click Import
    • ❗️ If you have a .zip file, unzip it and find .ics files for each of your calendars. Import each .ics file individually
    • ❗️ If you import repeat events from a .csv file, they might not show up that way. They'll be on your calendar as a series of one-time events
Manually migrate settings
  1. Copy global settings
  2. Update Calendly
    1. Link the new Google Calendar
    2. Update WRITE Calendar
    3. Ensure upcoming events are in the new calendar

Migrate GDrive

Setup subscription
  1. In order to migrate more than 30GB, you'll have to upgrade the plan: Business Starter → Business Standard
Migrate folder structure
  1. Shared drives (explained below) don't work with folders, as you can only move singular files
  2. To speed up, you can download folders and upload them to the new account
  3. With this method, though, Google Doc files (documents, spreadsheets) will be downloaded as office files and re-uploaded losing their original format. To avoid this, you can use Shared Drives (explained below)
Migrate Google Doc files
  1. From the new account, create a Shared Drive
  2. Invite the old address as Content Manager of the Shared Drive
  3. From the old account, move all Google Doc files to the Shared Drive
  4. Once done, un-share the Drive, and delete it
Migrate settings
  1. Copy global settings
  2. Update any links (bookmarks, Notion, etc.) to the new Google Drive
  3. Swap the local GDrive Sync client to use the new account

Migrate Google Photos

Setup Partner Sharing
  1. In the old account, go to Google Photos
  2. Go to Sharing > Share with Partner
  3. Select the new email address, then Send Invitation
  4. In the "new" Gmail (recipient of the forwarding): An invitation email will be sent to that address. Click the invitation link in that message
  5. Click Accept
  6. Turn on autosave to copy all photos to the new account
Manually re-add photos to albums
  1. This is the most painful part of the entire migration
  2. You'll have to manually re-create albums in the new account and re-add photos to them
Postmaster Tools
  1. Remove any registered domains from Postmaster Tools of the old account
  2. Re-register them in the new account
Google Search Console
  1. Remove any registered domains from Google Search Console of the old account
  2. Re-register them in the new account
Google Analytics
  1. Migrate ownership of Google Analytics properties to the new account (invite new user as Admin)
Subscriptions
  1. Review any subscription in Google Payments Center

Migrate Google Alerts

Copy alerts
  1. In the old account, go to Google Alerts
  2. Make a list of alerts, and copy them into the new account

Migrate Bookmarks

Export/Import
  1. Export from old Chrome profile
  2. Import into new Chrome profile

  1. Automatically forward Gmail messages to another account ↩

  2. Prepare your source account: Personal Gmail account ↩

  3. Migrate from Gmail or webmail to Google Workspace ↩

  4. Data migration service ↩

  5. Google Workspace migration product matrix ↩↩↩

  6. What is migrated? ↩

  7. Data migration service FAQ ↩

  8. Monitor a migration ↩

  9. Add, move, or import contacts ↩↩

  10. Import events to Google Calendar ↩↩

  11. To export your calendar, follow these steps ↩