How to move your mailbox: transfer all emails and folders

Setting up a new email address only takes a moment. But what about your old emails? Bills, contracts, family photos and years of conversations are sitting in your old mailbox. When you move your mailbox, you copy all of that into your new one: every email, every folder, including Sent and Drafts. Afterwards everything is in one place, and you can let the old address wind down at your own pace.

Here we show you three ways to transfer your emails, with their pros and cons. One of them costs nothing but time.

In short: You move a mailbox over IMAP, the technology email programs use to access mailboxes. You can do it with an email program like Thunderbird (free, but manual work), with your new provider’s import (convenient, but often incomplete) or with a moving service that copies every folder directly. Your old mailbox stays unchanged. Don’t delete anything there until everything has arrived.

What comes with you and what doesn’t

“Moving your mailbox” usually means getting your emails from one provider to another. But a few things aren’t part of the mailbox, and you need to take care of them separately.

What	Does it move?
Emails in your inbox	Yes
Sent, Drafts, Archive	Yes, if the way you choose copies all folders
Your own folders and subfolders	Yes, with their names and structure
Read, flagged, replied to	Usually yes
Contacts and calendar	Separately, by export and import
Filters, signature, out-of-office message	No, set them up again in the new mailbox
The email address itself	No, more on this in Keeping your email address

Before you move: what you need

Five minutes of preparation save you a lot of trouble later.

Login details for both mailboxes: the address and password for the old and the new mailbox.
IMAP at your old provider: Most providers allow access by default. At GMX and WEB.DE you have to turn it on once, and for Gmail, iCloud and Yahoo you need an app password. You’ll find the server settings for almost every provider under Email settings.
Enough space in the new mailbox: Check in your old mailbox’s settings how much storage it uses. The new mailbox needs at least that much free space.
Tidy up first: Spam and trash don’t need to come along. Old newsletters and emails with huge attachments are quick to find with our tools for large emails and newsletters.
A backup: If you want to be completely safe, download your old mailbox as a backup first.

Option 1: Move it yourself with Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a free email program for Windows, Mac and Linux. You add both mailboxes to it and copy the emails from one to the other. This works with almost every provider and costs nothing.

Install Thunderbird: Download the program from thunderbird.net and open it.
Add your old mailbox: Enter your name, address and password. Make sure IMAP is selected, not POP3. Only IMAP shows you all your folders.
Add your new mailbox: Go to Account Settings → Account Actions → Add Mail Account to add the second mailbox, also with IMAP.
Let the folders load: Click each folder in the old mailbox once. Thunderbird then downloads the emails. With large mailboxes this takes a while.
Create your folders: Create your own folders in the new mailbox with the same names (right-click the mailbox, then New Folder).
Copy the emails: Open a folder in the old mailbox, select all emails with Ctrl+A (on a Mac Cmd+A), right-click them and choose Copy To. Then pick the new mailbox and the matching folder. Copy your sent emails into the Sent folder of the new mailbox.
Count them: At the end, check that each folder contains the same number of emails.

Important: Use Copy To, not “Move To”, and don’t drag whole folders into the new mailbox with your mouse. Otherwise Thunderbird deletes the emails in the old mailbox as soon as they have been copied. If something breaks off along the way, they are missing in both places.

Good to know: With several thousand emails, copying often breaks off, for example when your laptop goes to sleep. If you then copy the same folder again, you end up with duplicate emails. So work folder by folder, and copy large folders in batches, for example one year at a time. Gmail also only accepts about 500 MB per day over IMAP, so larger mailboxes take several days.

Option 2: With your new provider’s import

Some providers fetch the emails from your old mailbox themselves. That’s convenient, but rarely complete.

Gmail offers a one-time import under Settings → Accounts and Import → Import mail and contacts. Your old emails end up there under their own label. Google is, however, ending ongoing fetching from other mailboxes and Gmailify. You can read more about this in Gmail is ending mail fetching.
Web hosts such as Strato sometimes offer their own moving service to customers with their own domain.
Other providers often only fetch the inbox, or there is no import at all. Look in the settings for “Import”, “Fetch” or “Migrate”.

After an import like this, check whether Sent and your own folders have arrived too. These are the ones most often missing.

Option 3: With a moving service like Mailovo

A moving service connects directly to both mailboxes and copies everything from server to server. Your computer doesn’t need to be on.

Here’s how it works at Mailovo: you enter your old and your new address, and we check the connection and whether there is enough space. Then we copy every folder. Sent, Drafts and Trash end up in the right folder, even if they have different names at the new provider. If the connection drops, we carry on from the same point, without duplicate emails. After the move we fetch new emails for 30 days from the old mailbox and give you an address checklist with all the senders you should tell about your new address.

You can test moving the last 30 days (up to 200 MB) for free, without signing up. What the full move costs is shown under Pricing.

For the move, you give the service access to your old mailbox. That is why the BSI advises changing the old mailbox’s password afterwards. How we handle your login details is explained on How we work.

Guides for common moves: GMX to Gmail, WEB.DE to GMX, T-Online to Gmail, Gmail to GMX and all other providers.

The three options compared

	Thunderbird	Provider’s import	Moving service
Cost	Free	Free	One-off, free test
All folders	Yes, by hand	Often only the inbox	Yes, automatically
Sent in the right place	By hand	Rarely	Yes
Effort	One to several hours	A few minutes	A few minutes
Large mailboxes	Often breaks off	Varies	Carries on after interruptions
New emails afterwards	No	30 days with Gmail	30 days of forwarding

If you have a small mailbox, a bit of patience and a computer, Thunderbird is a good choice. For large mailboxes, many folders, or if you’re doing it for your parents or grandparents, a service saves a lot of time.

How long does moving a mailbox take?

That mainly depends on its size. A mailbox of 1 to 2 GB is usually moved within a few hours. The new provider can slow things down: Gmail only accepts about 500 MB per day over IMAP, so moving a 3 GB mailbox there takes about a week. When Gmail is the old mailbox, it hands out about 2.5 GB per day. A good service then carries on automatically every day and copies the newest emails first.

After the move: what comes next

Do a spot check: Open a few older emails and your most important folders in the new mailbox.
Enter your new address everywhere: banks, insurers, online shops and authorities first. You’ll find a list in where to change your email address.
Tell your contacts: Ready-made texts are in Announcing your new email address.
Forward the old address: Forwarding at your old provider, or Mailovo’s forwarding, brings new emails into the new mailbox for a few weeks.
Close the old mailbox later: Only once nothing important arrives there any more. How to do that without losing anything is explained in Closing your old mailbox.

Common questions about moving your mailbox

Will I lose emails during the move?

Not if you copy instead of move. Then your old mailbox stays unchanged, and you can look things up there at any time or repeat the move. Only delete anything there once everything has arrived in the new mailbox.

Can I move just some of my folders?

Yes. In Thunderbird you simply copy only the folders you need. With Mailovo you deselect anything that shouldn’t come along before you start, such as the trash or old newsletter folders.

What’s the difference between IMAP and POP3?

With IMAP the emails stay on the server and you see all your folders. With POP3 a program usually only downloads the inbox, often without folders. For a move you need IMAP.

Can I move my mailbox on my phone?

With an email app on your phone that’s a lot of work. With Mailovo it works in your phone’s browser or with our Android app: enter the addresses, let us check them, done.

Does this also bring over my contacts and appointments?

Contacts and calendars aren’t part of the mailbox. With many providers you export them as a file and import them at the new provider. If both providers support syncing, such as GMX and WEB.DE, Mailovo can bring them along after the move if you like (beta).