One nice thing about Mail is the Redirect feature, which lets you forward mail to a particular address so that it does not appear to have been forwarded from you. The final recipient sees the message just as you did when it arrived in your inbox.
One annoying thing about Mail’s Redirect feature is that it cannot be used on more than one message at a time. You can’t select, say, the entire contents of one mailbox and tell Mail to redirect all those messages to your Gmail account. If you select more than one message, the Redirect menu item is unusable.
For people with the urge to adopt Gmail as their main email client, and shift their mail archives from Mail to Gmail in one fell swoop, this could be more than just annoying; it could be the deal-breaker that prevents them moving at all.
So be thankful for Mail Act-On, because this handy little Mail utility lets you do perform a simple redirect command for as many messages as you wish, with just a few keystrokes. I recently used it to move several months’ worth of email over to my Gmail account, and it worked like a charm.
The steps are very simple:
- Get Mail Act-On, if you haven’t already got it
- In Mail prefs, add a new rule:
- If all the following conditions are met:
- Every message
- Perform the following actions:
- Redirect message to (Your Gmail address)
- Give the rule a name that suits Act-On, and an appropriate shortcut key (mine was ‘r’)
- Select all the messages you wish to redirect, and hit “`” then “r”
- Sit back and wait while Mail gets on with the job
To avoid the prospect of Mail hanging with so much to do, I redirected my messages in batches of 100 or so; it didn’t take very long to get through 3000 saved emails. And thanks to the way the Redirect feature works, they all appeared at Gmail with their original senders, dates and appropriate attachments. I monitored my Gmail inbox during the process and periodically selected all the incoming new messages, marked them as read and archived them. The whole thing took about 30 minutes.
In Gmail, the messages appear with "me" as the sender (not the original sender) when viewing emails in a list. When you click into the email to view them individually, the original sender is shown.
Why though? I switched from Mail to Gmail about a year ago. And everything after that point is archived at Gmail. But I still use Mail as my primary appliance. It's where I store everything at home. But all my email is routed through Gmail. And the nice thing about Gmail is that I can use my alumni account or my work account and have it appear like it's coming from either of those accounts. I still don't see the need to keep EVERYTHING in Gmail. Perhaps I'm old fashioned. And still want the actual Mail to handle rules and sorting and the like.
If this is a one time thing, you can do it with out Act-On (not that I am trying to discourage the use of my software :)
Flag the messages you want to transfer.
Create a temp mail rule that redirects all the flagged messages. place it at the top
Create a temp mail rule that stops processing rules for all messages -- place it below the redirect.
Select all mail and apply rules from the Message menu.
When you are done, delete the mail rules you greated
whoops, When you are done, delete the mail rules you CREATED
You can't select, say, the entire contents of one mailbox and tell Mail to redirect all those messages to your Gmail account.
Yes, you can.
Put the "Redirect" in a Rule (say, matching all mail with your address in the To: line, or something that will match all mails in the box). Then select as many messaages as you like, and go to Message / Apply Rules. They'll all be redirected.
Wow you all really like to do things the hard way. I chose a different route.
In Gmail setup the option under accounts to send mail from your .Mac account (or what ever account you are looking to move)
In Gmail setup the option under accounts to download .Mac mail using pop3 (or what ever account you are looking to move)
In .Mac mail under preferences->other setup your account to forward all your new mail to gmail account
This configuration does a number of things, first you can alias your mail from gmail. Second any existing email in your .mac account will be sucked into gmail via the pop3. This way you don't have to forward your old existing mail to your gmail account. Finally any new mail that is sent to your Mac account during the transition period is automatically sent to your gmail account when it arrives (dont' forget to tell it to not keep a copy in your .Mac inbox otherwise it will be get duplicate message due to you downloading old mail via pop3). Once the pop3 service has sucked all your old email into gmail you can turn the feature off.
This will work with any email account which supports pop3 and mail forwarding.
One last thing I would do is under your gmail account settings is set it up to always reply using your gmail account vs. the account it was received on. This way all your friends, family and co-workers will have your new email address when you reply to their messages.
Thanks for this tip. I've had to convert to gmail since I have a new job and am on a pc at work (horrible, absolutely horrible) and so need a cross platform mail solution. I also like gmail's searching capabilities. Maybe it's the old G4 I'm on, but it seems like spotlight, and other search options on the mac just don't have the speed of gmail.
I just need two (!) Mail-Act-On-Rules to process all my E-Mail because I “live” in kGTD. I have a rule to archive my mail and I have a second rule to send the mail to kGTD (using the script “Mail 2 kGTD”) and archieve it.
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