Configure POP Access for Your Old Account
You must have your old account configured to allow access using Post Office Protocol. If you already set it up, make sure all email programs or services you have configured to download mail from your old Gmail account using POP are closed or set not to check mail automatically. Then skip to the next section. If you haven’t yet activated POP:
Make Your New Gmail Account Fetch Messages
Next, prompt your new Gmail account to fetch the messages you want to transfer.
Select archive Gmail’s copy to clear your old account’s inbox while keeping them in the Archive folder in case you want to access them later. Select delete Gmail’s copy to move mail instead of copying it. This option moves old messages to the trash, so you won’t be able to get them later. Select keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox to leave the original message untouched. Choose mark Gmail’s copy as read to leave the original email in the Inbox and mark it as read. This shows you what Gmail has forwarded and what it hasn’t.
Make Your Gmail Accounts Recognize Each Other
To make sure your old Gmail address is recognized by the new Gmail account as one of yours — and available for sending: Gmail will not fetch all messages in one go. It will download mail from the old account in batches of approximately 100 to 200 emails at a time instead. Typically, importing will start with the oldest messages. Gmail will download messages in your old Gmail account’s Sent Mail label along with messages you’ve received. Sent mail will appear under the new account’s Sent Mail label, too. After importing, you can use the old address with your new Gmail account, effectively combining the two accounts.
How to Stop Importing Mail from a Gmail Account
To stop Gmail from importing new messages from the old account, follow these steps.
How to Manually Move Emails
The steps above work solely within Gmail. The messages from your old account will feature new labels. Alternatively, add both Gmail accounts to a program like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird and manually drag individual messages or folders (i.e., labels in Gmail) between accounts, preserving the original labels from the old account.
