So I just had a nightmare of a time bouncing from cPanel providers. I figured there had to be something better. I decided to run a trial of Google Apps Standard for two weeks and consider if it would be viable to move businesses using cPanel to Google Apps Standard accounts.

The trial went well. I used Google Apps for two weeks and had no service disruptions and migration was painless. After the trial, I moved my family’s small business http://midhurstroofing.ca to Google Apps.  Here’s some problems I encountered during the migration and how I fixed them:

Microsoft Outlook + POP3 + Google Apps Migration Tool Lost TimeStamps

I finished my first user and hooked up IMAP. All the dates for messages were wrong. The dates shown after the migration were all < 1 day and they should have gone all the way back to 2009.

Apparently the problem is related to Outlook displaying the DateTime from a part of the message header that is updated during the migration. I found two solutions to this: The first, was to use an email client other than Outlook. Literally any other client has no issues with the Google Apps Migration Tool - Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail, mobile clients, etc.

The second, for those that have users that are too used to Outlook to switch cold turkey, is to change Outlooks view to sort and display the Sent DateTime of the message header instead of Received(default). To accomplish this: - click the Sort by Date at the top of your message list. - click custom - change Sort to Sent

This view change is on a per-folder level, meaning you’ll have to do it on a couple folders. Depending on your user, usually Inbox and Sent is a must. All future emails (not migrated) will have the proper information in the headers for Outlook to handle this under default settings. Hopefully Microsoft improves IMAP to handle this like other email clients do.

Users were used to an Inbox under Personal, now the IMAP mailbox is a separate item in the Navigation Pane

For this challenge, I made sure unused PST/Archives listed in the navigation pane were removed (AutoArchive) since users get boat loads of storage with Google Apps, there’s no need to retain copies locally. 

The next thing was to either hide or delete email messages on the user’s machine. I recommend hiding them in a subfolder until you’re confident the move to Google Apps is complete. Next is to make sure when Outlook is started, it shows their IMAP inbox instead of their old Inbox. To do this:

  • Tools > Options > Misc tab
  • Advanced Options
  • Change which folder is opened when Outlook runs
  • Select the inbox under IMAP After that’s done, I collapsed the whole Personal archive in the navigation pane.

This results in a Navigation pane that looks very similar to the user’s old one.

Sent items need to go into GMail

Make sure their sent items are properly being placed in their GMail Sent Items and not a local folder or the copy Google Apps Migration Tool makes.

I need to delete IMAP folders in Outlook, but it says “Permission Denied”

GMail only allows the deletion of IMAP folders through the web interface. For this, I suggest you login to the web interface and use Manage Labels to clean things up. Manage Labels interface:

As you can see, there’s a lot of garbage folders that one might not necessarily use that get copied in a migration.

That’s all! Overall I’m pleased with the outcome and I hope users are too.