Transfering emails from BT to Gmail?

[DampDog]

Not sure if this is the place to ask, but I've drawn a blank using my GoogleFu.

Long story short. I've been with BT for years but decided to bin them off. Now my BT email address has been my main email address for 20 years or more, so has accrued a shed load of emails.

I also have a gmail account that I use occasionally. I want to make the gmail account my primary account and move all my old emails into there. Basically so I'm not faced with this problem again, should I switch ISP again.

It's my own fault, I never gave it a thought as I'd been with BT for literally decades.

I thought it would be a simple task of simply importing the email/contacts from BT to Gmail but for whatever reason when I try to use Gmail's import tool it points me at Yahoo. (possibly because BT used Yahoo front end years back) So it doesn't recognise my email address so I'm stumped.

It's one of those, that will be easy jobs...

BT want £7.50 month to keep the email alive. They can stick that where the sun don't shine.

 

[DampDog]

OK sounds like a plan. I use a little program called EmClient anyway.
So I should already have local copies of all the emails on the servers ( I assume that's how it works)

Thing is, in about a week or so my email@BT account/server will vanish into the ether, so the only copies I will retain will be my local copies. Ideally I would like to be able copy my local files over to my new email@PlusNet account so I still have copies on the server and locally to try and be disaster proof.

My understanding of how a .pst file works is minimal at best. I thought when you when created the .pst, it includes all your accounts into a single file? So you get copies of all your accounts locally. However when my BT server vanishes the local copies no longer mirror to anything.

Hope I've explained that so as it makes sense. In essence I want all my emails at emails@BT to live in the emails@PlusNet account, so they are all mirrored again.

 

[DampDog]

All you have to do as already stated is just get an email client that supports exporting to PST file. A PST is just a file that contains all of your email combined into one file.

Once you have gone from BT > Export > PST just log into your new email providor, send a test email to make sure it's working then IMPORT > PST. It's as simple as that really.

Already at it thanks. Just had no need to do it before so finding my way a little.
Cheers.

 

[DampDog]

Thanks for pointers folks. It just tripped me up that Gmail wouldn't do it straight off bat. No idea why their own import points at Yahoo. Yet another BT annoyance.

 

[DampDog]

Aye it's deffo a pain in the backside. Been with them for so long I just became complacent and never gave it much thought. I'll just have to work through everything, but no doubt something will come to light that I've missed. I would have chosen Gmail as my primary in the first instance, but the webmail interface was awful back then. I don't have a windows mail account and was thinking about starting afresh, but I'd put money on it being charged for at some point in the future. I'm just a tight-wad..

 

[DampDog]

I had BT call me last evening with a "sorry to hear you're leaving us follow-up" Apparently the last call handler I spoke to wasn't happy with the way I had been dealt with and raised a complaint on my behalf. They credited my account with a little good-will gesture and refunded the fees they're applied in error. I asked if my email would end on the last day of switching and was told they normally give you 90 days grace, sometimes a little longer depending how it falls.

I knew their emails were initially "Yahoo" However for the most part I thought they had been switched to BT. I suspect the issues for importing emails to Gmail are probably down to Google pointing to the wrong place.

Anyway, spent the majority of yesterday afternoon importing all my old stuff into my Gmail account (which I barely used prior) and setting up a new rescue account using a free outlook.com address. Hopefully should I need to move ISP again email issues shouldn't be an issue. In truth it's something I should have given some thought years back to avoid having to scramble to get stuff sorted. I'm just not savvy or organized enough.

Thanks for the pointers folks. I know you can find all this stuff on TinTerNet if you spend some time digging. But the folks on here are normally up to speed on most things, so answers come faster...

Thanks again.

I assume the PlusNet Hub is just a clone of the BT HH5? I'm sure for my needs it's more than up to the job, but are there any more robust/flexible alternative worth considering.

 

[DampDog]

Well it really does take an age. I spent a whole afternoon and a few evenings working through everything I have written down and a few odd bits that came to mind here and there. I've continued to monitor the old accounts for nigh on two weeks and they have now gone "quiet" so the hope is I have caught everything that was important. I spoke to BT customer service and the default time-span for the web-mail remaining active is 90 days. However it can be longer.

I assume that if I want to empty the old account content it's a matter of deleting everything via the web-mail interface or email client end? (unless there is a reset content option buried in the web-mail options?) Am I right in thinking that simply deleting the "account" in the email client I am using, will simply severe the connection and remove (or hide them) locally on my PC. However everything will still remain in-place on the mail/web-server side until "deleted?"

Have I understood it correctly, in that while removing the email account. Mail content will get deleted from my email client (eM Client in my case) However contacts will remain intact and not vanish with any associated email deletions? I don't use Microsoft's "People-app" It doesn't appear to save all the content from my email client contacts manager.

 

[DampDog]

This thread illustrates why it's good to have your own domain name. Just have the domain set to forward everything to BT / GMail / whoever. Then you sign up to everything with an ID from your domain. And when you change ISP or mail provider you just update the mail forwarder and the emails come to you at your new address.

Well yes... But it's easy enough to be wise after the event. I would imagine the average "home-user" will never give it a second thought until the day comes when they need to switch ISP. Like many things if you know how to do it, it's easy, if not it's a learning curve and a task. Personally I have been with BT for literally decades so it never crossed my mind. How much does it cost to get your own domain name and get everything forwarded??

 

[DampDog]

I've used Fasthosts for perhaps 2 decades and it's a tenner a year. You want a domain provider which does catch-all forwarding which effectively gives you an infinite number of email addresses.

Cheers.

I'll hold my hand up and admit it's not something I'd given any thought to prior to ditching BT. I'd never looked into it, assuming it was something that cost a fair few quid and came packaged with other services, so never bothered to look.

I assume you choose a domain name for however long suits your needs, then associate their email package with it and forward your mail on to wherever suits. so you end up with [email protected]...B,C,[email protected]. Though on the site above it looks like for the cheapest package you are limited to 2 email addresses.

 

[DampDog]

In that case I have no real understanding of how it all works and it's time to do some reading-up.

 

[DampDog]

What's nice to know?

I think it was a bit of sarcasm aimed at my "I have no understanding" post.

We do get this a bit. Folk like myself who are novices really, or who only ask questions when they are in trouble or need to know how to do something. There's this under-current of "Doh!..how do you not know that?"

I know you can hit the "Google-button" and research stuff for yourself, but there's tons of folk on here who very knowledgeable who will point you in the right direction very quickly.

I've still wouldn't know how to set it up, or what product to ask for once you've splashed on your own domain name?