Migrate from Gmail to Office 365 in 7 steps

Before you get started, these are some things to be aware of:

• Not ready to make the commitment to give up Gmail? No problem. Use this article to check out Office 365. You don’t have to move your entire domain over yet if you’re not ready.
• When you finish the seven steps described here, all existing Gmail messages are sent to Office 365. Email messages will continue to be delivered to Gmail and will be copied to Office 365 every 24 hours. At some point, you can decide to shut down Gmail entirely and permanently route all mail to Office 365.
• You’ll copy Gmail email, contacts, and calendar items into Office 365 with these steps, but unlike email messages, Gmail contacts and calendar items do not continue to get copied into Office 365. If users add new contacts or calendar items to Gmail, they’ll need to manually add the new items to Office 365 or you’ll need to repeat the steps in this article for copying calendar items and contacts to Office 365.
• In Step 2. Create a Gmail migration file, you’ll need to reset users Gmail passwords. You should let users know that they won’t have access to their Google accounts while you’re doing the migration. You’ll also need to get them their new passwords for Gmail after the migration and it may require calling them or using an alternate email address to get them the information.

To complete these steps, you should open separate browser windows and sign in to Google Admin console and Office 365 admin center using your admin credentials.

Prepare for migration to Office 365

To get the most out of this guide, make sure your Office 365 environment is set up and that you’ve completed the following tasks:

Added a domain to Google Apps You have a business domain for your Google Apps email address; for example, @contoso.com.

Configured Office 365 You’re signed up for Office 365 and you’ve signed into your account and explored the Office 365 admin center. While there are different versions of Office 365, this guide uses the Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan. The concepts discussed here apply to the other versions of Office 365 as well.

Added your domain to Office 365 As a global administrator, you added your business or company domain, for example, @contoso.com, from your Google Apps email to Office 365 to use with email and other services. For help, watch the video or run the Add a domain wizard by going to the Office 365 admin center and selecting Office 365 > Setup.

Created the users’ email addresses on this domain You can create a user one at a time directly in the Office 365 admin portal, or you can add them in bulk with a .csv file.

Identified roles Some tasks in this process will be completed by you, the admin, and others can be completed by users in your organization.

• As the Office 365 administrator, you’ll move email from Gmail to Office 365.
• You can move contacts and calendar items to Office 365 or you can choose to have the users in your organization move their contacts and calendar items. Contacts and calendar items are specific to each user and for users to move this information, they must be signed in with their Office 365 usernames and passwords.

Installed Outlook If you plan to copy over calendar entries as part of the migration, you’ll need to install Microsoft Outlook. Once the calendar items are imported, users can use Outlook Web Access or Outlook to view the calendar items. See configure Outlook to work with Office 365.

OK, with the above tasks completed, let’s get started with the migration steps.

Step 1. Create Office 365 mailboxes

You need to create an Office 365 mailbox for each user you want to migrate from Gmail. Open the Google Admin console to get the list of current Gmail users you want to move to Office 365, and then make a corresponding Office 365 mailbox.

To create Office 365 mailboxes for Gmail users

1. Sign in to Google Admin console using your administrator username and password.
2. At the Google Admin console, choose Users.
3. Hover over the name of each user whose mailbox you want to move to Office 365 and write down the email address.
   
4. Sign in to Office 365 admin center with your admin username and password, choose users and groups > active users.
5. Choose the plus icon (+) to add a new user account.
6. On the details page, enter a Display name and a user name.

   Important:
   Be sure to select the same domain name as the email address that belongs to your Gmail email address.

7. On the settings page, make two settings for each user:
   1. Assign necessary privileges
   2. Set a location
   Choose next.
8. On the Assign licenses page, make sure your Exchange Online plan is selected. In this example, Exchange Online Plan 2 is selected.
   
9. On the Send results in email page, enter an email address where you can receive the temporary passwords for users in your organization.
10. The newly created user names and passwords appear on the Results page and will also be sent to you in email.
    Save this information to share with your users.
    As shown below, you should now have an Office 365 mailbox for each Gmail mailbox. At this point, Office 365 only receives email from the other users listed here. Mail messages from outside of Office 365 will continue to go to Gmail. In the steps that follow, you’ll connect to Gmail and copy email messages from Gmail to Office 365 and configure Office 365 to accept all incoming email that goes to Gmail.
    

Step 2. Create a Gmail migration file

In this step, you’ll use Excel to create a migration file, which is a comma-separated values (CSV) file that contains the list of Gmail accounts to be migrated into Office 365. You can create the CSV file using Excel 2013, Excel 2010, or Excel 2007.

To create a Gmail migration file

1. Sign in to Google Admin console using your administrator username and password.
2. After you’re signed in, choose Users.
   
3. Hover over each name to identify each user’s email address and write it down.
   
4. You’ll need the Gmail passwords for the users in your organization. If you don’t have the passwords, you can hover over each user name and choose Reset Password. Reset the password and write the new password down next to the related user name.

   Note:
   Note that you’ll need to let the users in your organization know that their Gmail passwords have been changed and what the new password is. You’ll need to get them their new passwords by some other means than Gmail since they won’t have access to their Gmail messages during the migration. It may require that you call or use an alternate email address.

5. On your local computer, open Excel.
6. Using the following screenshot as a template, create the migration file. Each row of the migration file represents a user to migrate from Gmail to Office 365.
   
   
   
7. Column A is the name of the Office 365 mailbox, Column B is the Gmail email address, and Column C is the password for the Gmail email address.
8. Save the file as a CSV file type, and close Excel.

Step 3. Connect to the Gmail server from Office 365

As part of the migration process, Office 365 needs to communicate with Gmail. Office 365 uses a migration endpoint, which is a network connection between Gmail and Office 365 used to transfer email. It’s important to successfully connect to the Gmail server before continuing the migration.

To connect to the Gmail server from Office 365

1. Sign in to Office 365 admin center with your admin username and password.
2. Go to the Exchange admin center by choosing Exchange in the drop-down list next to Admin on the ribbon bar.
   
3. Choose recipients > migration > more (…) > migration endpoints.
4. Choose the plus icon (+) to create a new migration endpoint.
5. On the Select the migration endpoint type page, choose IMAP.
6. Set IMAP server to imap.gmail.com and keep the default settings the same.
   
7. Choose Next.
8. When you reach the Enter general information page shown below, you have successfully created a migration endpoint.
   

   Note:
   If you get an error creating the migration endpoint, see Test the Gmail connection.

9. On the Enter general information page, enter a Migration endpoint name, and leave the remaining two fields blank.
10. Choose new to save the migration endpoint.
11. The migration endpoints page appears and displays the endpoint you just created.
    
12. Close the migration endpoints page.

Step 4. Migrate Gmail messages to Office 365

Only Gmail messages are copied to Office 365 in this step. The steps for moving a user’s contacts and calendar items are covered later.

This step begins the first copy or synchronization of Gmail messages into Office 365. Additional synchronizations of Gmail messages into Office 365 will occur every 24 hours.

To migrate Gmail messages to Office 365

1. On the Exchange admin center, choose Recipients > Migration.
2. Choose the plus icon (+), then Migrate to Exchange Online.
3. Choose IMAP migration and then Next.
4. Choose Browse and specify the CSV migration file that you created in Step 2. Create a Gmail migration filePlaceholder Link Text.
   
5. Choose Next.
6. On the IMAP migration configuration page, choose next.
7. On the Move configuration page, enter a new name for the new migration batch. This example uses Gmail-TestBatch. Choose Next.
   
8. On the Start the batch page, select Manually start the batch later. This will give you a chance to see how the process works. Once you’re familiar with the process, you can choose Automatically start the batch. The status field is initially set to Created, as shown in the following screen.
   
9. Choose the Start icon (play button).
   The status will change to Syncing …
   
   …and then to Synced after the Gmail messages have been synchronized with Office 365.
   

   Important:
   After completing this step, mail continues to be delivered to Gmail but the connection also allows Gmail messages to be copied to Office 365 every 24 hours. This connection to Gmail is a great way to test and verify that email is moving from Gmail to Office 365.

Step 5. Migrate Gmail contacts to Office 365

You copy contacts from Gmail to Office 365 by exporting the contacts to a CSV file, and then importing that file into Office 365. Contacts are unique to each Gmail user.

Tip:
If you choose to have the users in your organization copy their own contacts into Office 365, send them these instructions.

Before copying a user’s contacts from Gmail to Office 365, two requirements must be met:

1. The user or admin must sign in to Google Apps as the user whose contacts you want to migrate.
2. You must choose Outlook CSV format when you export Gmail contacts to a CSV file.

To migrate Gmail contacts into Office 365

1. Sign in to Google Apps as a user whose contacts you want to migrate to Office 365.
2. Choose Contacts > More > Export.
3. Choose All contacts > Outlook CSV format > Export.

   Important:
   You must choose the Outlook CSV format option to successfully import the Gmail contacts into Office 365.

4. Select a location to save your file.
5. Sign in to the Office 365 admin center.
6. Choose People and then choose the Settings icon, which looks like a small gear, next to your name in the Office 365 ribbon bar.
7. Choose Import contacts
8. Select the Gmail CSV file you saved in step 4, and choose Next.
9. After the Gmail contacts have been successfully imported into Office 365, choose finish.

Now that Gmail contacts have been copied to Office 365, users can use Outlook or Outlook Web Access to view their contacts. However, if new contacts are added to Gmail, they are not copied over automatically to Office 365. A user can add the new contact to Office 365 manually or run the import process again.

Step 6. Migrate Gmail calendar to Office 365

You copy calendar items from Gmail to Office 365 by exporting the Gmail calendar items as an iCal file. After you save the iCal file, you’ll use Outlook to import calendar items into the Outlook Calendar.

Tip:
If you choose to have the users in your organization copy their own calendar items into Office 365, send them these instructions.

Calendars are also unique to each Gmail user. You must sign in to Google Apps as the user whose calendar you want to migrate.

Important:
You can’t import the iCal file directly into Outlook Web Access. You’ll need to do this with Outlook, and you’ll have to configure Outlook to work with Office 365 .

To migrate Gmail calendar to Office 365

1. Sign in to Google Apps as a user whose calendar you want to migrate to Office 365.
2. Choose Calendar > My calendars > Settings > Export calendars.
3. Select a location to save your file.
   Gmail saves the iCal file as a compressed file. Unzip the file before you proceed to the next step.
4. In Outlook, choose Calendar > File > Open & Export > Import/Export > Import an iCalendar (.ics) or vCalendar file (.vcs) > Next.
5. Choose Comma Separated Values and then select the iCalendar file you saved in step 2, above.
6. Choose to import the calendar when asked to open it as a new calendar or for import.
7. Choose Outlook calendar > Finish.
8. You should now see the Gmail calendar items within the Outlook calendar.

Now that the user’s Gmail calendar entries have been copied over to Office 365, the user can view them by using Outlook or Outlook Web Access. If the user adds new calendar entries in Gmail, they won’t be automatically copied over to Office 365. The user will have to add the calendar entries into Office 365 by hand or you’ll have to run the calendar import process again.

Step 7. Verify the Gmail migration to Office 365 completed successfully

You’ve migrated Gmail messages, contacts, and calendar items to Office 365, and now you can use Outlook Web App or Outlook to check that Gmail migrated successfully. Each user will need their Office 365 username and temporary password to sign-in to Office 365 and validate that their Gmail messages, contacts, and calendars have been moved to Office 365, and they can begin exploring its many features.

To verify a successful migration to Office 365

1. Open the email message sent by the Office 365 administrator that includes your temporary password.
2. Go to the Office 365 sign-in page and sign in with the user name and temporary password sent by your administrator.
3. Update your password, and set your time zone. It’s important that you select the correct time zone to ensure your calendar and email settings are correct.
4. When Outlook Web App opens, send an email message to the Office 365 administrator to verify that you can send email.
5. Choose Outlook and check that your Gmail email messages and folders are all there.
6. Choose People and check that your Gmail contacts are all there.
7. Choose Calendar and check that your Gmail calendar items are all there.