Moving Archived Emails from Gmail to iCloud

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Moving Archived Emails from Gmail to iCloud

Ever since Google dropped support for Exchange syncing in Gmail (AKA Google Sync) I have been looking for a solid push-email service (ideally one that is free). I have been testing iCloud mail and it seems to provide the reliable syncing across devices that I used to have through Google.

The problem now is that if I am going to access my email through iCloud, I would like to use the same service to see all of my archived emails. I tried to figure out a reliable way to transfer over 17,000 emails (about 4GB) from my Gmail archive to my new iCloud account. I have the 20GB storage plan from Apple so there is plenty of space available on the server. Every method I have tried results in an incomplete transfer of the emails, typically after transferring between 300 and 1,500 emails.

Here is what I have tried:

-Drag and drop from Gmail IMAP folder to iCloud IMAP folder using the Yosemite Mail app.

-Drag and drop from local .mbox file (produced by Google Takeout) to iCloud IMAP folder via Mail app.

-Use of Mail "Rules" to copy/move emails to the new iCloud server.

-Something with Automator?

All of these methods end with an error saying that connection to the iCloud server has timed out. If it was a "copy" operation, I have no efficient way of telling what emails are left to transfer. More alarmingly, if it was a "move" operation, I notice that the source folder is now empty even though only about 5% of the emails are at the new location. Luckily, I had backups.

Any suggestions on how to perform this migration?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Apr 20, 2015 1:55 PM

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nscaruso Author

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Apr 28, 2015 10:31 PM in response to nscaruso

Well, I finally figured out something that works.

I took my iCloud account account "offline" and copied the messages into the folder structure of the account in Mail. This happened relatively quickly. Once it was copied over, I brought the account back online and waited for it to sync with the server via IMAP. The syncing was very slow and would bring up an occasional error message, however it always continued from where it left off. All in all it took over a week for it upload/sync all of the messages to the server.

At the end of the sync I was left with a local folder of about 90 un-synced messages This was a small enough percentage that I was able to copy them over via simple drag and drop. I then copied over the emails that had accumulated over the past week and I was done.

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