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I currently use POP to access my gmail through thunderbird, but I would like to switch to IMAP so that my folders are mirrored on the server, and my sent emails are also available through the web interface.

The problem is that I have 1000s of emails in many different folders in Thunderbird, and in gmail, all my emails are in the same folder.

How can I perform the migration, and get all my folders from my POP access into Gmail?

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Whatever you do, try to back things up before you switch. Reason: I did this quite a while ago (sorry, don't remember the details) and didn't like how things worked afterwards with IMAP and switched back to POP -- which was relatively easy because I had a backup to revert to. – martineau Jul 31 '11 at 15:27
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Setup a new IMAP account in Thunderbird then simply drag&drop your folders from the PO3 account into the IMAP account.

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This sounds like an incredibly good idea. Have you actually done it? – martineau Jul 31 '11 at 15:35
Also, this sounds like it could get tricky since there's only one Gmail account involved -- a pre-existing one with (presumably) messages already in it. – martineau Jul 31 '11 at 15:50
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This is what I have gone with... and it does work however: 1) You end up with duplicate emails in gmail (I just archived all the copies) 2) Nested folders don't seem to come across very well, so I had to recreate the folder structure a bit. Apart from that it seemed to work ok. Ty – mrwooster Jul 31 '11 at 17:45
@martineau Yes, I had IMAP on one PC and POP3 on another one, and moved my emails from POP to IMAP. – Nicu Zecheru Aug 1 '11 at 11:13
@m4wooster You're welcome. Folders created in your email client are actually Labels on GMail, this is why nested folder's don't come across very well. – Nicu Zecheru Aug 1 '11 at 11:15
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This post from Google might answer your question on how the transition will work:

How do actions sync in IMAP?

Here's a guide to how other actions in your IMAP client will appear in the Gmail web interface.


I'm not really sure though how this will help you, it just explains how working with IMAP is translated to Gmail.

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