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The Copy mailbox tool available in the Migration section of the Control Panel allows you to copy the contents of a local or remote mailbox to a local mailbox on your hosting account. In this article we will show you how to copy a mailbox from Gmail.

Prepare your account at Gmail

1. Log in to the mailbox that you want to copy at https://mail.google.com.

2. Click on Settings (the gear icon in the top right corner of the interface) > See all settings.

3. Go to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, and in the IMAP access section, check the Enable IMAP option. Click Save Changes to apply the new setting.

4. Access the security section of the account at https://myaccount.google.com/security.

5. In the Signing in to Google section, click the 2-Step Verification option, and complete the steps to activate 2-step verification for your account.

Signing in to Google

Note: Google Workspace accounts that do not see the 2-Step Verification/App passwords options, need to ask their Google Workspace Admin to enable 2-Step Verification as explained in the Set up 2-Step Verification page of the Google Workspace Admin Help website.

6. Now, on the Security page at https://myaccount.google.com/security, in the Signing in to Google section, right under 2-Step-Verification, you should see a new option called App passwords. Click it.

7. On the next page, from the Select app drop-down menu, choose Other (Custom name), and type a descriptive name such as "copy mailbox via IMAP".

8. Click GENERATE, and copy/save the password somewhere safe, as you will need it.

App Passwords

Copy the mailbox via the hosting Control Panel

1. Log in to your hosting Control Panel and go to the Migration section > Copy mailbox subsection.

Note: If the local mailbox is with an addon domain, make sure the correct domain is selected from the Domain drop-down menu in the Select a domain section.

3. Fill in the following details under Source IMAP account credentials:

  • E-mail account: <type the full address of your mailbox at Gmail, e.g. [email protected]>
  • Password: <type the password you got in step 8 above>
  • Hostname: imap.gmail.com

4. From the Destination mailbox drop-down menu, select the local mailbox where you want to copy the contents of the Gmail mailbox.

Copy mailbox

5. Click Continue, and allow some time for the process to complete.

A detailed log of each mailbox copy operation gets written in a directory called "imapsync" located in the /private directory of the hosting account.

AttentionGmail has a bandwidth limit of 2500 MB per day for downloading data with IMAP.