How to Export and Import Email Between Accounts

At some point almost everyone needs to get email out of one account and into another. You are leaving an old provider, consolidating two addresses, setting up a new work mailbox, backing up years of mail before you close an account, or just want a copy of everything you have sent and received sitting safely on a drive you control. The task sounds simple — it is your own mail, after all — and then you open the settings and hit a wall of unfamiliar words. MBOX. EML. PST. IMAP. Takeout. Import wizard. Each provider calls it something slightly different, each one hides the button somewhere else, and none of them explain which path actually fits what you are trying to do.

The confusion is understandable, because "export and import email" is really two different jobs wearing one name. Sometimes you want a file — a downloadable archive of your messages you can store, search offline, or load into another program later. Sometimes you want a live transfer — mail moving directly from one running account into another, folders and all, with nothing touching your hard drive in between. Those two jobs use different tools, produce different results, and fail in different ways. Picking the wrong one is how people end up with a 12 GB file they cannot open, or a half-finished copy that silently dropped their oldest folders.

This guide walks the whole thing end to end, in plain language. You will get a clear map of the file formats and what each one is good for, step-by-step exports from Gmail (via Google Takeout) and Outlook (via PST), the import side for each, how to use Thunderbird as a free universal bridge, how to copy mail directly between accounts over IMAP, and how to bring the rest of your data — contacts as vCard, calendars as ICS — along with the messages. We will flag where things commonly break, what to verify before you delete anything, and the privacy points worth caring about when your entire email history is sitting in a file.

Near the end we cover the part the official guides skip: that for day-to-day life across more than one account, a bulk export-and-import is usually the wrong tool entirely. If your real goal is just to read and answer mail from two or three addresses without juggling them, you do not need to move messages at all — you connect the accounts into one place. We will explain when to export, when to import, and when to skip both, and how an AI-native email client like AI Emaily fits the third case.

What does it actually mean to export and import email?

Before touching a single setting, it helps to be precise about what these two words mean, because the whole rest of the process depends on getting this distinction right.

Exporting email means taking messages out of an account and writing them somewhere you control — almost always a file. The result is a static archive: a snapshot of your mail as it existed at the moment you exported. It does not stay in sync with the account afterward; if a new message arrives an hour later, it is not in the file. Export is the right verb when your goal is a backup, an offline copy, evidence for a legal or compliance need, or a portable bundle you intend to load into a different program.

Importing email means taking messages from a file (or another account) and putting them into a destination mailbox so they appear there as normal email — readable, searchable, foldered. Import is how an archive becomes live mail again in a new home. If you exported your old Gmail to a file and then imported it into Outlook, those years of messages now sit in your Outlook account as if they had always been there.

There is a third path that skips files altogether: a direct account-to-account transfer over IMAP, where messages copy straight from the source server to the destination server. Nothing lands on your computer in between. This is technically a copy rather than an export-then-import, but people reach for it for the same reason — moving mail from A to B — so we treat it as a first-class method below. It is often the cleanest option when both accounts are live and you simply want everything in the new one.

Knowing which of these three you actually need is half the battle. The table further down maps formats and methods to goals; the callout right here is the shortcut.

What email file formats should you know about?

Almost every export hands you a file in one of a small number of formats, and they are not interchangeable. Knowing what each one is — and which programs can read it — saves you from exporting into a dead end you cannot import out of. There are really only a handful that matter, and they fall into two camps: formats that pack a whole mailbox into one file, and formats that store one message per file.

MBOX is the closest thing email has to a universal archive format. A single MBOX file holds an entire folder of messages concatenated together, plain text under the hood, and it is what Google Takeout produces, what Thunderbird stores mail in, and what Apple Mail can import and export. Because so many tools speak MBOX, it is usually the safest format to export into if you are not sure where the mail will end up — most destinations can read it, directly or through Thunderbird.

EML is the one-message-per-file format. Each .eml file is a single email — headers, body, and attachments — in a standard internet-message format that almost any mail program can open by double-clicking. EML is excellent when you want to save, forward, or examine individual messages, and many Windows tools (including Outlook and Windows Mail) export and read it natively. The trade-off is volume: a mailbox of 40,000 messages becomes 40,000 files, which is unwieldy to move around compared with a single MBOX.

PST is Microsoft's Outlook archive format and the standard in the Windows and Microsoft 365 world. A PST file can hold not just messages but folders, contacts, and calendar entries together, which is why Outlook's own import/export wizard uses it. The catch is that PST is a Microsoft format — outside the Outlook ecosystem, support is patchy, and you will often need Outlook (or a conversion tool) to get mail back out of a PST. OLM is the Mac-Outlook cousin of PST and behaves the same way, locked to Outlook for Mac.

Beyond mail itself, two more formats carry the data that travels alongside it. vCard (.vcf) is the standard for contacts — one file can hold one contact or your whole address book, and every major provider and phone reads it. ICS (.ics) is the standard for calendars and individual events; exporting your calendar as ICS lets you import it into a new account's calendar. We cover both in their own section. Here is the full format map.

How do you export email from Gmail with Google Takeout?

Gmail does not have a simple "download all my mail" button inside the inbox. Instead, Google routes mailbox exports through Google Takeout, the company's data-export service for every Google product. Takeout packages your selected Gmail data into MBOX files (one per label, effectively) and gives you a download link, usually as one or more zip archives. It is the official, complete way to get your Gmail out — including the full message bodies and attachments — and it is free.

A few things to know before you start. Takeout exports a snapshot, not a live feed, so anything that arrives after you request the export will not be included. Large mailboxes can take a long while — Google assembles the archive in the background and emails you when it is ready, which can be minutes for a small account or many hours (occasionally more than a day) for a multi-gigabyte one. And the download is split into chunks if it is large, so you may get several zip files rather than one. Follow these steps.

1. 1

   Go to Google Takeout

   Visit takeout.google.com while signed in to the Gmail account you want to export. This is the same service used for exporting Photos, Drive, and the rest of your Google data.

2. 2

   Deselect everything, then choose only Mail

   Click "Deselect all" so you do not export your entire Google footprint by accident, then scroll down and tick only "Mail." This keeps the export focused on your Gmail messages.

3. 3

   Choose which labels to include

   Under Mail, open "All Mail data included" and pick whether you want every label or a subset. If you only need the inbox and a few folders, select them here to keep the file smaller.

4. 4

   Set the file type, size, and delivery

   Choose a delivery method (download link by email is simplest), file type (.zip is the most compatible), and a max archive size (e.g. 2 GB or 4 GB). Larger mailboxes will be split into multiple files at that size.

5. 5

   Create the export and wait

   Click "Create export." Google assembles the archive in the background and emails you a download link when it is ready — anywhere from minutes to many hours depending on mailbox size.

6. 6

   Download and unzip

   Open the link, download every part if there are several, and unzip them. Inside you will find MBOX files containing your mail. Keep these somewhere safe — this is now your Gmail archive.

How do you import that Gmail archive into a new account?

Once you have MBOX files from Takeout, importing them depends on where they are going. There is no single button that takes an MBOX and pushes it into any provider, so the practical route for most people is to use Thunderbird as a free intermediary: import the MBOX into Thunderbird, then let Thunderbird upload the mail to your new account over IMAP. We cover the Thunderbird method in full in its own section below — it is the most universal path and works for Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Fastmail, Proton (via Bridge), and any IMAP provider.

If your destination is another Gmail or Google Workspace account, Google offers a built-in shortcut that skips files entirely: the "Import mail and contacts" feature in Gmail settings, which pulls mail directly from another account using your credentials. This is genuinely the easiest path for Gmail-to-Gmail moves and also works for importing from many POP-capable providers. Here is how it works.

1. 1

   Open Gmail settings on the destination account

   In the account you want the old mail to land in, go to Settings (gear icon) → See all settings → Accounts and Import.

2. 2

   Find "Import mail and contacts"

   Look for the "Import mail and contacts" row and click "Import mail and contacts." A pop-up window opens to walk you through connecting the source account.

3. 3

   Enter the source account address

   Type the email address of the account you are importing from and follow the prompts to authorize access. Google will connect and read the mail it can reach.

4. 4

   Choose what to import

   Select whether to import contacts, existing mail, and new mail for the next 30 days. The 30-day option is useful while you transition and update your address with senders.

5. 5

   Start and let it run

   Begin the import. It runs in the background and can take up to a couple of days to complete for large mailboxes; imported mail appears with a label so you can tell it apart.

How do you export and import email in Outlook (PST)?

In the Microsoft world, the standard archive is the PST file, and Outlook ships with an Import/Export wizard built specifically for creating and loading them. A PST can hold messages, folders, contacts, and calendar entries in a single file, which makes it a tidy way to back up a whole Outlook profile or move it to a new computer or account. The catch, as noted earlier, is that PST is a Microsoft format — to read it back you generally need Outlook on the other end (or a conversion tool). For Outlook-to-Outlook or Microsoft 365 moves, though, it is the natural choice.

Note that the classic Import/Export wizard lives in the desktop Outlook app for Windows. The web version (Outlook on the web) and the newer Outlook apps do not always expose full PST export, so for a complete export you will usually want the desktop client. Here is the export side first.

1. 1

   Open the Import/Export wizard

   In desktop Outlook (Windows), go to File → Open & Export → Import/Export. This launches the wizard used for both directions.

2. 2

   Choose "Export to a file"

   Select "Export to a file" and click Next, then choose "Outlook Data File (.pst)" as the type. This is the PST archive format.

3. 3

   Select the mailbox or folders

   Pick the account or specific folders to export. Tick "Include subfolders" to capture everything beneath a folder. Choose the top of the account to export the whole mailbox.

4. 4

   Choose where to save and handle duplicates

   Set the destination path for the .pst file and pick how to handle duplicates. Optionally set a password on the PST for protection.

5. 5

   Finish and wait

   Click Finish. Outlook writes the PST file; a large mailbox can take a while. When it is done you have a single .pst archive you can store or move to another machine.

How do you use Thunderbird as a free import/export bridge?

Mozilla Thunderbird is the workhorse most people end up using when no official shortcut fits, and it is free and open source. The reason it is so useful: Thunderbird stores mail in MBOX internally, can import MBOX files (with the ImportExportTools NG add-on), and can connect to any IMAP account and synchronize folders both ways. Put those together and Thunderbird becomes a universal bridge — you can pull mail in from a file or one account, then push it out to a different account, regardless of provider.

The classic move is exactly the one Gmail-to-anywhere migrations need: import your Takeout MBOX into a local Thunderbird folder, connect your destination account over IMAP, then drag the messages into the destination's folders. Thunderbird uploads them to the new server, and they appear in your new account on every device. Here is the bridge workflow.

1. 1

   Install Thunderbird and the import add-on

   Download Thunderbird, then install the "ImportExportTools NG" add-on from the add-ons manager. This is what lets Thunderbird read and write MBOX files directly.

2. 2

   Connect your destination account over IMAP

   Add the account you want the mail to end up in, making sure it connects via IMAP (not POP) so that folders sync to the server. For Gmail/Outlook this is usually automatic; for iCloud/Fastmail you may need an app password.

3. 3

   Create a local folder and import the MBOX

   Under "Local Folders," create a folder, right-click it, and use ImportExportTools NG → Import mbox file to load your Takeout (or other) MBOX archive. The messages appear locally.

4. 4

   Drag messages into the destination account

   Select the imported messages (or whole folders) and drag them into a folder under your destination IMAP account. Thunderbird uploads them to the server.

5. 5

   Wait for the upload to finish

   Large transfers take time and must complete while Thunderbird is open and online. Watch the activity/status bar; do not quit mid-upload or you may get a partial copy.

6. 6

   Verify on the destination

   Log in to the destination account on the web and confirm the messages, folders, dates, and attachments are all present before deleting anything from the source.

How do you copy email directly between accounts over IMAP?

When both your old and new accounts are live and you simply want everything moved from one to the other, the cleanest option is often a direct IMAP copy that never produces a file at all. IMAP keeps mail on the server and mirrors folder structure, so a tool that connects to both accounts can read each folder from the source and recreate it on the destination, message by message, preserving folders, read/unread state, and dates. There are two common ways to do this: with a desktop client like Thunderbird (drag folders from one account to another, as above), or with a dedicated migration tool.

The best-known dedicated tool is imapsync, a free, open-source command-line utility built precisely for moving a mailbox from one IMAP server to another. It is the standard answer for clean account-to-account migrations because it is incremental — you can run it more than once and it only copies what is missing, which is what makes a zero-downtime cutover possible (sync, switch your address over, sync again to catch stragglers). It is a command-line tool, so it suits the more technical or the determined; the trade-off for that learning curve is the most reliable bulk transfer available. The general shape of an IMAP copy looks like this.

1. 1

   Enable IMAP and get credentials on both accounts

   Confirm IMAP is turned on for the source and destination. For providers with two-factor login (Gmail, iCloud, Fastmail, Yahoo), generate an app-specific password rather than using your normal one.

2. 2

   Gather each server's IMAP settings

   Note the IMAP host, port, and security for both ends (for example imap.gmail.com:993 over SSL). Each provider publishes these in its help docs.

3. 3

   Choose your tool

   For a drag-and-drop approach, add both accounts to Thunderbird over IMAP. For a scripted, incremental migration, install imapsync and prepare the source/destination host, user, and password parameters.

4. 4

   Run a test on one folder

   Before moving everything, copy a single small folder to confirm credentials and folder mapping work and that nothing is duplicated or mangled.

5. 5

   Run the full copy

   Transfer all folders. With imapsync, run the command; with Thunderbird, drag the folders across. Large mailboxes take hours — keep the machine awake and online.

6. 6

   Re-sync to catch new mail, then verify

   If mail kept arriving during the transfer, run the copy again (imapsync only adds the new messages). Then verify counts and spot-check folders on the destination before retiring the source.

How do you export and import contacts (vCard)?

Email rarely travels alone. When you move accounts, your address book usually needs to come too, and contacts have their own standard format: vCard, with the .vcf extension. A vCard file can hold a single contact or your entire address book, and because every major provider, phone, and contacts app reads and writes it, vCard is the universal currency for moving contacts. The pattern is always the same — export to .vcf from the old account, import the .vcf into the new one.

The exact menu varies by provider but the shape does not. In Google Contacts you export from the Export option (choosing vCard for compatibility with Apple/iOS, or Google CSV for Google-to-Google). In Outlook/Microsoft you export contacts as CSV or vCard. On iCloud, you select contacts and export as a vCard. Importing reverses it: open the new account's contacts, choose import, and point it at the .vcf file. Here is the generic flow.

1. 1

   Open contacts on the old account

   Go to the contacts/address-book area of the account you are leaving (Google Contacts, Outlook People, iCloud Contacts, etc.).

2. 2

   Export as vCard (.vcf)

   Find the Export option and choose vCard for the widest compatibility. If both ends are Google, Google CSV preserves a few extra fields; otherwise vCard is the safe pick.

3. 3

   Save the file

   Download the .vcf (or .csv) file. A single file typically contains your whole address book.

4. 4

   Open contacts on the new account and import

   Go to the new account's contacts, choose Import, and select the file you exported. The contacts populate the new address book.

5. 5

   Check for duplicates and merge

   After import, run the new account's "find duplicates"/"merge" tool if it has one, since re-importing or syncing from a phone can create copies.

How do you export and import your calendar (ICS)?

Calendars use yet another standard, and it is worth bringing along so you do not lose recurring meetings, birthdays, and events when you switch. The format is ICS (.ics), the iCalendar standard, which every major calendar — Google, Outlook, Apple — can export and import. An ICS file can represent a single event (the kind you get as an invite attachment) or a whole calendar's worth of events exported at once.

Exporting is usually a matter of finding the calendar's settings and choosing "Export," which downloads an .ics file (Google zips it). Importing is the mirror: open the destination calendar, choose Import, and load the .ics. One thing to watch is that import brings events in as a one-time copy — it does not subscribe you to a live, updating calendar; for a calendar that keeps updating (like a shared team calendar) you want to subscribe to its URL instead of importing a static file. Here is the standard export/import.

1. 1

   Open calendar settings on the old account

   In the source calendar (Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, Apple Calendar), open settings for the specific calendar you want to move.

2. 2

   Export to ICS

   Choose Export. Google Calendar downloads a .zip containing one .ics per calendar; Outlook and Apple let you save an .ics file directly.

3. 3

   Unzip if needed

   If you exported from Google, unzip the archive to get the .ics file(s) for each calendar you want to bring over.

4. 4

   Import into the new calendar

   In the destination calendar, choose Import, select the .ics file, and pick which calendar the events should land in.

5. 5

   Spot-check recurring events and time zones

   After importing, verify that recurring events and time zones came across correctly — these are the entries most likely to shift, especially across providers in different default time zones.

What can go wrong, and how do you avoid losing mail?

Export and import look mechanical, but they fail in quiet ways — the kind you only notice weeks later when you go looking for an email that is not there. The good news is that nearly every failure mode is preventable with a little caution and one firm rule: verify everything on the destination before you delete anything on the source. Treat the old account as your safety net until you are certain the new one is complete.

The most common problem is an incomplete transfer that looks finished. A drag-and-drop in Thunderbird that you quit mid-upload, a Takeout download where you grabbed only the first of three zip files, an IMAP copy that timed out on the largest folder — all of these leave you with most of your mail and a false sense that the job is done. Always compare message counts folder by folder, and pay special attention to your biggest folders, which are the ones most likely to be cut short.

Other recurring issues: provider size and rate limits (Gmail and others throttle how fast mail can be uploaded over IMAP, so very large migrations crawl and sometimes stall — be patient and re-run incremental tools); folder and label mismatches (Gmail's labels are not folders, so a message with three labels can appear three times after import, or nested folders can flatten); attachments and encoding (rare, but verify a few messages with large attachments actually carried them); and duplicates from running an import more than once. The table summarizes the big ones and the fix.

Do you even need to export and import — or just connect both accounts?

Here is the question the official guides never ask, and it is the most important one: are you actually trying to move your email, or are you just trying to use it? Because those are different problems, and bulk export/import only solves the first one. A lot of people go through the whole MBOX-and-IMAP ordeal when what they really wanted was simply to read and answer mail from two or three addresses without logging in and out all day. For that, you do not move a single message.

Export and import is the right tool in a specific set of cases: you are permanently leaving a provider and want your history in the new one; you are closing an account and need a backup before it disappears; you have a legal, compliance, or archival reason to hold a fixed copy; or you are consolidating onto a single primary address for good and want everything under one roof. In those situations, the methods above are exactly what you need, and the effort is worth it because it is a one-time move with a clear end state.

But if your situation is the far more common one — a work address and a personal address, or a couple of project inboxes, all of which are staying active — then exporting and importing is the wrong tool. You would be copying mail that is going to keep arriving in the original account anyway, creating duplicates and drift, and solving none of the actual annoyance, which is the constant switching. The real answer there is not to merge the mailboxes at all. It is to connect them, leaving each account exactly where it is, and read and write across all of them from one place.

How does AI Emaily let you use every account without exporting anything?

For the day-to-day case — several live accounts you want to actually use, not relocate — AI Emaily is built to skip the export/import dance entirely. It is an AI-native email client that connects your existing accounts and brings them into one unified inbox, so your mail stays exactly where it lives now while you read, search, and reply across all of it from a single place. There is no MBOX to wrangle, no PST to convert, no IMAP copy to babysit; you connect Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Fastmail, Proton, or any IMAP account, and everything shows up together.

The difference from a bulk migration is that nothing is duplicated or frozen. Because the accounts stay connected rather than copied, new mail keeps flowing into each real mailbox and simply appears in your unified view — read state, folders, and sending all sync back to the right account. Reply to a message that came into your work address and it goes out from your work address; reply from personal and it leaves from personal. You stop logging in and out without ever creating a second, drifting copy of your mail.

On top of that, AI Emaily does the work an archive file never could. It learns your writing voice and drafts replies for you, it triages and summarizes across every connected account at once, and it can act as an autonomous chief-of-staff for your inbox — all in its default Copilot mode, where it prepares the work and waits for your approval before anything is sent. So the AI is helping you keep up with live mail across accounts, which is the thing exporting and importing can never do for you. And it is private by design: your mail is used to help you, encrypted and not used to train models for anyone else.

If your goal genuinely is a one-time move — you are leaving a provider for good — the export/import methods in this guide are the right path, and connecting AI Emaily to the new account afterward gives you the AI layer on top. But if your goal is to stop juggling accounts you intend to keep, the simplest answer is the one nobody sells you: do not export anything. Connect your inboxes and use them together. You can start free at app.aiemaily.com/signup — the Free plan is $0 and connects your accounts with AI drafting, and Pro is $17.99/month billed annually when you want the full agent across everything.

The bottom line on exporting and importing email

Moving email between accounts is straightforward once you separate the two jobs hiding inside it. If you want a stored copy you control, export to a file — MBOX is the safe universal choice for messages, PST for the Outlook and Microsoft 365 world, EML for individual emails. If you want years of old mail to live in a new account, either export and then import (Thunderbird is the free bridge that connects almost any pairing) or copy directly between live accounts over IMAP, with imapsync as the reliable tool for a clean, incremental migration. Bring the rest of your data along too: contacts as vCard, calendars as ICS.

Whatever route you take, protect yourself the same way. Use app-specific passwords for migration tools and revoke them when you are done, never hand your real password to a random web service, verify message counts and spot-check folders on the destination, and — the one rule that prevents the worst outcome — keep the old account alive until you are completely certain the new one is whole.

And before any of that, ask the question that saves the most effort: do you actually need to move your mail, or just use it? Export and import is the right answer when you are leaving a provider, closing an account, or need a fixed backup. When you simply want to stop switching between accounts you intend to keep, the better answer is to connect them — and that is exactly what AI Emaily does, putting every account in one inbox with an AI that drafts and triages across all of them, while you keep final say. Move it when you must; connect it when you can.