I am setting up Google Apps and need to replicate all my user email accounts (about 20 in total) within Google, then move all the mailboxes over, then change the MX records to point to Google's servers. All of that is fine, no question about that.
My issue is this: Let's assume that the domain is test.com and I own it. I want to create all the email accounts on Google that I currently have on my other provider. So I set up the first one – let's call it bob@test.com – and add Bob as the user.
Then when I want to use the Mail Fetcher method, to retrieve all of Bob's emails still on the old server, I go in to Gmail's Account settings and fire up Mail Festcher…but it won't let me retrieve mail from bob@test.com (the old address on the old server which still works because I haven't switched yet) because I have created bob@test.com within Google Apps in preparation for my switch over. Any ideas?
I suppose I could create a different named account – eg BobSmith@test.com in Google, import all the emails from Bob@test.com and then call bob@test.com an alias under BobSmith@test.com….have I just answered my own question? Is there a simpler, more elegant way of doing this?
Only about 4 users use IMAP and have files on the server…but their mailboxes are huge (a couple of GB) and our uplink is very slow, so the method of downloading them locally and then uploading to GMail will take ages….
Ideas?
Best Answer
From Migrate mail, contacts, and calendars - Google Apps Help
When switching to Google Apps from another program or web service, you and your users can bring your existing mail, contacts, and calendar data with you. You have a variety of options for migrating data into Google Apps, depending on the size of your organization and the system you’re migrating from.