IMAP to IMAP migration

The need for IMAP to IMAP email migration has become increasingly common, driven by factors like organizational restructuring, mergers, platform upgrades, or the adoption of new email services. IMAP to IMAP migration ensures that emails, folders, and attachments are preserved across different servers while maintaining data integrity and minimizing disruptions. However, this process often involves challenges such as managing large volumes of emails, avoiding duplicate messages, and ensuring the migration does not interfere with ongoing email operations.

EdbMails IMAP migration software effectively addresses these challenges by supporting seamless migration across all IMAP servers, including Hotmail, Outlook, Gmail, Google Workspace, Office 365, Microsoft Exchange, Zoho, Zimbra, IceWarp, cPanel, Plesk, GoDaddy, Rackspace, Google Vault and Enterprise Vault, AWS Workmail, Bluehost, Dreamhost, and more. EdbMails ensures secure data migration without duplication, even during repeated transfers, through its incremental migration feature. The software offers concurrent mailbox migration, enabling high-performance transfers across multiple mailboxes simultaneously, which significantly reduces the overall migration time. It also guarantees zero downtime by performing migrations in the background, allowing users uninterrupted access to their email services. With advanced filtering options, users can customize migrations by selecting specific folders or emails to include or exclude. EdbMails intuitive interface simplifies the migration process, making it fast and hassle-free for users to complete the transfer with minimal effort. These features make EdbMails a robust solution for secure, high-performance, and efficient IMAP to IMAP migrations.

1. IMAP to IMAP migration plan

   Planning is one of the most important steps before you begin migrating your IMAP data to IMAP. Here is a brief checklist of points to consider before you migrate.

   1. Remove unused mailboxes and duplicate emails files from the source.
   2. Make an inventory of items before you make the move such as
      • User accounts, email addresses and passwords
      • The source and target server details, browser and operating systems used
      • Network settings, DNS configurations, MX records, firewall settings
      • Licensing plans on your current source IMAP server
   3. Determine the size and number of mailboxes you want to migrate.
   4. Create appropriate user mailboxes on the target server
   5. Ensure you have enough network capacity and bandwidth to migrate
   6. Communicate the migration plan and changes to your end users and stakeholders.
   7. Perform a test migration before you start the actual one.
   8. Start the actual migration, verify the endpoints and update the MX records.
   9. Check for correct mail flow

2. IMAP to IMAP pre-migration activities

   • Obtain your IMAP server hostname, port number, email address, and password.
   • If you plan to migrate multiple users download the sample CSV file from the EdbMails application and enter the details of each users mailboxes you want to migrate
   • If you want to connect to Gmail, make sure to create an app password and use it in place of your regular password.

      See how to find your IMAP server name

3. IMAP to IMAP migration using EdbMails

   • Step 1: Download and install EdbMails IMAP migration tool

     • Download and install EdbMails application on any Windows computer.
     • Open the application and click 'Login' with the email address and password or click 'Start Free Trial'

       

        See the list of system requirements for IMAP migration.
     • Choose 'IMAP migration' as the migration option

       

   • Step 2: Connect to source IMAP server

     • To connect to a single user mailbox, select ‘Single User / Account Migration’. Choose the desired ‘Host Name’ from the provided list or manually enter the IMAP server hostname. Verify the port number and enter the email address and password.

       

     • To connect to multiple user mailboxes, select ‘Multiple (Bulk) Users/Accounts Migration’ and click the ‘Load Mailboxes From CSV File’ button.

       

     • Download the sample CSV file

       

     • Modify the CSV file with the required details such as email address, password, host name and port number in the CSV file and Save the changes.

       

     • Next, browse and load the CSV file.

       

     • Verify the list of mailboxes and proceed.

   • Step 3: Select source IMAP server mailboxes

     • Choose the mailboxes and folders from the left pane of the main migration window.
     • Next, click on ‘IMAP To IMAP’.

       

   • Step 4: Connect to target IMAP server
     • To connect to a single user, check the ‘Single User / Account Migration’ option. Then, choose your IMAP server hostname from the list or manually enter the required hostname. Enter the port number, email address, and password, and click the ‘Login’ button.

       

     • To migrate multiple mailboxes, select ‘Multiple (Bulk) Users/Accounts Migration’ and click the ‘Load Mailboxes from CSV File’ button.

       

     • Download the sample CSV file

       

     • Modify the CSV file with the required details such as email address, password, host name and port number in the CSV file and Save the changes.

       

     • Next, browse and load the CSV file.

       

     • Verify the list of mailboxes and proceed.
   • Step 5: Source to target IMAP mailboxes mapping
     • Select the required mailbox mapping option.

       

     • EdbMails automatically maps source IMAP mailboxes to the target IMAP mailboxes. making it especially useful for efficiently managing large volumes of mailboxes during migration.

       

     • Click the ‘Folder and Item Filter’ button to set filters for your migration. For instance, you can choose to migrate data only within a specific date range by applying a date filter. Additionally, you can exclude both standard and custom folders from the migration.

       

   • Step 6: Perform the IMAP to IMAP migration

     After mapping the mailboxes, click ‘Continue,’ enter a job name, and proceed. Once the migration completes, EdbMails prompts the migration completion message. To view the migration report, click the ‘View Log’ button. Finally, log in to your target server to verify that all items have been successfully migrated.

     

4. IMAP to IMAP post-migration activities

   Once the migration is completed, update your MX records to route email traffic to the new server.

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Additional resources:

• IceWarp to Office 365 migration
• Zimbra to Office 365 migration
• AOL Emails to Office 365 migration
• Zoho Mail to Office 365 migration
• GoDaddy to Microsoft 365 migration
• ProtonMail to Office 365 migration