How to Copy (Migrate) Emails Between Google Workspace User Accounts

Quick and easy-to-follow guide for Google Workspace administrators

How to migrate emails between Google Workspace users: meet the Data migration service

Google Workspace’s Data migration service can migrate emails and their respective folders/labels between users from the same Google Workspace or entirely separate Google Workspace accounts.
For the steps in this article, the user accounts involved in the migration on both sides must have IMAP on, as shown here.

How the email data migration works

The migration doesn’t remove messages from the source mailbox; it creates exact copies in the one you are migrating to.

Before you start an email migration

Before you start transferring emails, make sure that you have already created Google Workspace users for the migration.
Make sure the Less secure apps setting is enabled for all users you are migrating mail from, including the admin account. Otherwise, the migration won’t work. If you have restricted this setting on the admin level, follow these steps to allow it first.
Also, if a user has 2-step verification, you need to generate an app-specific password and use it instead of the regular password during the migration setup

How long does email data migration to Google Workspace take?

It’s tough to tell how long a migration will take. The speed varies depending on the number of messages in the source mailbox.
Generally speaking, mailboxes with less than 1000 emails shouldn’t take longer than 15-30 minutes to complete.
More significant migrations can go on for days.

How to transfer emails from other services to Google Workspace step-by-step with images

Step 1

Go to the Admin console https://admin.google.com and click Data migration.

Step 2

Click SET DATA MIGRATION UP.

Step 3

Click Select a Migration Source.

Step 4

Select Google Workspace and click START.

Step 5

Next, adjust your migration preferences. First, set the Migration Start Date. This feature will transfer only emails starting from the date you select.
Here you can choose whether or not to transfer deleted emails, spam or exclude some folders from the transfer.
Click SELECT USERS.

Step 6

To run a bulk migration involving multiple users, click here for the next steps.

To run a single migration from one email to a single user in your Google Workspace, click Add user and follow the next steps below.

Step 7

In the Source Email field, type the full email address of the mailbox you want to copy from.
The password of that mailbox goes in the Password field below.
Type the full email address of the Google Workspace user you want to migrate emails to at the bottom.
Click START.

Step 8

That’s it, now you’ll see that the migration is Initializing under the Status column.

You can check the box to the left of the migration info to pause the migration, resume it or stop it completely. Stopping the migration doesn’t remove any emails that have already migrated.

The Status column will update when you refresh the page, starting with Estimating the number of items in the source mailbox. It may take some time, especially if there are lots of messages.

When it finishes, the Status will change to Complete.

You can hover over it to see the number of migrated and failed emails. However, it won’t show you which emails have not migrated and why.

You can always restart the migration from scratch to migrate over any emails that failed to migrate the first time. You won’t generate any duplicates in the Google Workspace mailbox. You can repeat the process as many times as you need to, although it rarely takes more than one go.

Please note that if you are migrating lots of emails, it may take up to a few hours for the emails to appear in the new mailbox.

Step 9

You can click More above the migrations list and select Pause all migrations to pause all migrations at once.

Click Exit migration to stop all migrations, or click Email reports to send a migration-related report.

Step 10

Two reports will be sent, one that contains the current status of all users from whom a migration was started and the item error report, which shows which messages failed to migrate.

If you like, you can add additional recipients.

How to migrate multiple mailboxes at once

Step 1

To migrate multiple mailboxes at once, click Bulk upload with csv.

Step 2

Now you need to create a file in .csv format that lists all mailboxes involved in the migration in the format requested in this image.

Step 3

To create the file, go to Google Sheets https://sheets.google.com and click the Blank + icon under Start a new spreadsheet, or create a Google Sheets file from Drive at https://drive.google.com. Either way works.

Step 4

How to fill out the migration CSV file

First, on the top left, type a name for the spreadsheet – in this case, we named it Migration CSV.

Next list all mailboxes involved in the migration, as shown in the image above.

On each row, you need to list a single source mailbox to migrate emails from and a single destination mailbox to migrate mail to:

The destination mailbox you will migrate to goes in the first column (where we put in “Google Workspace Email”)
The source mailbox you will migrate from goes in the second column.
The password of the source mailbox you will migrate from goes in the third cell.
If the destination and source have the same email address, the second cell should be left empty, as we’ve done on rows 2 and 4.

In the example above, in row 1, we have the Google Workspace email we want to migrate mail into in cell A.
In cell B, we have the source email we want to migrate.
In cell C, we have the password of the email account in cell B.

In row 2, in cell A we have the Google Workspace email we want to migrate mail to.
Cell B is empty because the email we want to migrate from is the same as the Google Workspace email.
In cell C, we have the password of the account we want to migrate.

Step 5

When ready, on top, click File, then select Download as > Comma-separated values.

If you use Google Chrome, the file will show up in the bottom left. You can click the little arrow next to it and select Show in folder to see which folder it got downloaded to if you’re not sure.

Step 6

Now that the file is ready, back on the Google Workspace page, click ATTACH FILE, then find the file on your computer and select it. Then click UPLOAD AND START MIGRATION.