outlook/gmail: How do I switch from outlook to gmail?

Question

My friend who owns his own business currently has a old email account with wideopenwest, and uses outlook to manage his emails. Currently, if he received an email on one device the email only shows on that device. For example, if he is sent an email and clicks receive on his laptop, or his laptop is the first one to auto receive, no other device he is logged on to outlook with can see or receive the email. I couldnt figure out why this was happening, so I suggested he switch to gmail by forwarding all his emails from the wideopenwest account to the gmail account.

Because he owns his own business, he cant afford to lose the emails he currently has, or the ones people will still send to his wow email for one reason or another. Does anybody know the exact steps I need to take to achieve this, so that people can email either address and he can view all the emails on his gmail account, AND on outlook as a backup

Thank you!

Answer 1

Google says that Wideopenwest uses POP3 protocol to communicate with clients. One of the nuances of that protocol is that by default, when mail is downloaded to a device, it is deleted off of the server unless told to do otherwise.

To get around the problem, you can configure Outlook to leave a copy on the server instead of deleting them. To do this in Outlook 2010 / 2013 / 2016:

• On the File tab, click Account Settings > Account Settings
• On the E-mail tab, under Name, select the POP3 email account, and then click Change. Click More Settings.
• On the Advanced tab, and then under Delivery, select the Leave a copy of messages on the server checkbox.

Keep in mind that the intended purpose of POP3 is generally to "dump" data out to the client and therefore save space on server(s), so these providers tend to be stingy about mail quotas. If you decide to go this route, you want to be aware of any quota limitation that you could quickly hit. In my opinion, POP3 is a dated paradigm, and is only really used by companies where mail is sort of a backburner service, like ISPs...

As you seemed to have figured out already, forwarding the E-Mail to something more modern (GMail) could be a better solution. I believe GMail supports IMAP and/or Activesync, and you won't run into the deletion issue with those protocols. To "migrate" away from the Wideopenpost account, you could set up the Wideopenpost and Gmail account via IMAP in Outlook simultaneously, and then just drag the mail from one mail folder to the other.

Answer 2

A nice breakdown of the steps required can be found here: http://robfine.com/migrateoutlookcomemailstogmail The article is a bit old, but as far as I know, nothing has changed in the details since.