Archive:From IMAP to Gmail

Intro
This howto describes howto move mail from an IMAP server to Gmail. AOL and many other mail providers use IMAP servers.

If you are using Windows you will need to get help from a friend who uses Linux - ask around the office or at school. Most Linux users are very enthusiastic to help others.

Generic IMAP
Assumptions
 * Gmail User: JohnDoe75.Archive
 * IMAP Server: imap.aol.com
 * IMAP Username: johndoe75
 * IMAP Password: secret

fetchmail --keep --all --protocol IMAP \ --smtpname JohnDoe75.Archive@gmail.com \ --username johndoe75 \ --auth password \ --folder "Inbox","Drafts","Important","Forwards" \ imap.aol.com Enter password for johndoe75@imap.aol.com: > secret
 * 1) Go to http://gmail.com and get a Google E-mail account
 * 2) * Create a second account if you want to test this before doing it "for real"
 * 3) Get on a machine that has fetchmail (Linux, BSD, MacOSX)
 * 4) * You may need to get help from a friend or co-worker for this
 * 5) * You could also visit http://UbuntuLinux.org and get a LiveCD with Linux on it
 * 6) Run fetchmail from gnome-terminal, konsole, or any other terminal
 * 7) * I put this in a script called aol2gmail.sh for readability and reusability

Tips

 * --keep / --nokeep : force to either keep or remove messages from the IMAP server
 * --all : retreive both old (read / seen) messages and new messages
 * --verbose / --silent : how much progress information to show


 * : If you're remotely connecting to a machine to run fetchmail and you have a large number of messages, it would be a good idea to run a screen session so you can reconnect to the shell if you get disconnected.
 * CTRL+A D to disconect
 * to reconnect


 * Try before you buy... or mess up your gmail inbox: After initially creating my account I sent myself a new invite and created JohnDoe75.Archive to test this process before using --nokeep and permanently moving all mail to my main JohnDoe75 account.


 * If you don't have fetchmail you can use apt-get install fetchmail to install it on Debian/Ubuntu Linux.

Common Servers

 * AOL: imap.aol.com