How to export emails from Gmail to another Gmail account

How to export emails from Gmail to another Gmail account: the quickest way is the new account's Import mail and contacts setting, which copies the old mailbox over a few days. POP fetching and a forwarding filter cover new mail, and Google Takeout plus Thunderbird is the route that keeps labels. For a copy that lives outside both accounts, open the Takeout MBOX in your browser with the converter.

Method 1: Import mail and contacts in the new account

This is Gmail's own migration tool. It works from the new account and pulls everything from the old one, Gmail or not.

1. Sign in to the new account. Open Settings (gear), See all settings, Accounts and Import.
2. Next to Import mail and contacts, click Import mail and contacts.
3. Enter the old address, sign in to it in the pop-up and grant access.
4. Tick Import mail, Import contacts and, if you want new mail copied for the next 30 days, Import new mail for next 30 days.
5. Click Start import. Imported messages get a label with the old address so you can find them.

The import runs on Google's side and can take from hours to two days for large accounts. Labels from the old account are not recreated; everything arrives under the single import label, with the original dates and headers intact. If the old account is a Google Workspace account, the administrator may have disabled this option.

Have the email as a file (EML, MSG, MBOX)? Convert it to PDF in your browser: nothing is uploaded.

Method 2: Fetch the old mailbox over POP

The older route uses POP, which the new account can poll on a schedule. It copies messages in batches and keeps checking for new ones.

1. In the old account: Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP, choose Enable POP for all mail (even mail that has already been downloaded), and save. Decide what should happen to the old copy: keep it, archive it or delete it.
2. In the new account: Settings, Accounts and Import, Check mail from other accounts, Add a mail account.
3. Enter the old address, choose Import emails from my other account (POP3), use the server pop.gmail.com, port 995, SSL on, and the old account's password or an app password if two-step verification is on.
4. Optionally tick Label incoming messages and Archive incoming messages so the backlog does not flood the inbox.

Gmail fetches a few hundred messages per pass, so a large mailbox takes days. Labels are lost, sent mail is included because Enable POP for all mail covers it, and the Gmailify option you may see on this screen is for Yahoo, Outlook.com and similar providers, not for a second Gmail account.

Method 3: Forward new mail with a filter

Forwarding does not move anything that already exists; it copies what arrives from now on. Use it alongside one of the methods above, or alone when the old address just needs to keep working for a while.

1. In the old account: Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP, Add a forwarding address, enter the new address and confirm the verification email in the new account.
2. Either choose Forward a copy of incoming mail to for everything, or leave it off and create a filter: search box drop-down, criteria, Create filter, tick Forward it to and pick the address.
3. A filter can also Skip the Inbox (Archive it) in the old account so you do not read the same mail twice.

Method 4: Takeout plus Thunderbird, to keep labels

When the folder structure matters, export and re-import by hand. Google Takeout writes an MBOX per label; Thunderbird can read MBOX and copy messages into any IMAP folder, which Gmail shows as a label.

1. Export the old account with Takeout: Mail, All Mail data included, pick labels, create the export, download and unzip. Steps in export Gmail emails.
2. Enable IMAP in the new account (Forwarding and POP/IMAP) and add it to Thunderbird.
3. Install the ImportExportTools NG add-on in Thunderbird, right-click Local Folders, import the .mbox files; one local folder per label appears.
4. Create matching labels in the new Gmail, then drag the messages from each local folder into the matching Gmail folder in Thunderbird. Thunderbird uploads them with their original dates, headers and Message-IDs.

This is the slowest method to set up and the most faithful. It also leaves you with the MBOX on disk, which is the only one of the four that produces a copy outside Google.

Export emails from Gmail to another Gmail account: which method when

Moving to Outlook or from Outlook follows different paths; see Gmail to PST and PST to Gmail.

Keep a copy outside both accounts

A move between two Google accounts leaves the mail in Google. If the reason for the move is leaving a job, closing a business address or a dispute, keep the Takeout MBOX and make PDFs of the messages that matter. Drop the .mbox on SaveMail: it lists every message, renders each with its full header block, body and attachments, and saves a PDF through the print dialog, one message at a time, with attachments downloadable as a ZIP. The file never leaves your device. For an ongoing plan see backup Gmail emails.

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