Jeremy Phillips

Now that I’ve joined NetConnix, I don’t see the need to spend close to $30/month on Exchange 2007 hosting for my mailbox. I started looking around a few days ago and considered Google Apps but initially dismissed it due to the lack of IMAP support. Strangely enough, I was reading my RSS feeds this morning and noticed this entry on Slashdot about Google finally adding IMAP support. I was sold, so started the transition this morning. It is a bit of work to transition from Exchange/Outlook to Google Apps I found out. I started researching and found this blog entry by Scott Hanselman which detailed the transition of his family to Google Apps. I wasn’t worried about my wife and kids – they’ve been using Google Apps on the phillfam.com domain for quite some time. I was, however, interested in exactly how I was going to move 2GB of mail from a PST to Google Apps. Scott Hanselman recommended gMove from limit none but being the cheapskate that I am I new there had to be a cheaper way, and there is, if a little bit time consuming. So, without further ado, the method I found to migrate my mail from Outlook 2007 to Google Apps for free is as follows;

1. Launch Outlook Express
2. Setup IMAP connection to Google Apps
3. Import mail from Outlook to Outlook Express local folders
4. Drag and drop mail from Local Folders to Google Inbox

It is most definitely not the fastest method on the planet – I’ve imported 240MB in over the past four hours – but definitely works if you’re not willing to spend the money for a software tool to do it for you.
After getting everything setup I switched my MX records about 4 hours ago and have already started receiving mail without issue. I’ve got all mail from jphillips(at)jphillips.us and jwp(at)phillfam.com redirecting to jeremy(at)jeremyphillips.org now so update your address books for my personal e-mail address.

If you’re interested in switching your domain to Google Apps now that IMAP is up and running, click the link below to sign up.