Gmail to Hotmail; Making The Switch
Hi Michelle! Enjoyed reading about your switch from hotmail to gmail because I just made the reverse switch! I haven't…
Like many of you, I’ve had a Gmail account for many many years, but I’ve decided to make the move from Gmail to Hotmail. I’ve stuck with Gmail for so long because it was just easier, but I’m really tired of all the spam. I didn’t make this major change without a lot of Gmail to Hotmail research (yes, Gmail to Hotmail is a major change for this tech mom.)
Why Gmail to Hotmail?
I knew that I wanted an option that is available everywhere, both online and offline, so that limited my options a bit. I decided to move from Gmail to Hotmail because of the following features:
- Sweep away mail you do not want
- Integration with SkyDrive & Microsoft Office
- Alias email addresses
- Integration with Facebook and LinkedIn
- Spam protection
Gmail to Hotmail Aha Moment!
Believe me when I say this was a HUGE decision for me. I have spent years organizing my email with hundreds of tags in Gmail and I do not want to start all over. I was at Best Buy a few weeks ago and a Windows Phone Rep was there and we got to talking about the Windows Phones integrating with Hotmail. That was when I mentioned my Gmail to Hotmail dilemma.
He asked me, “how often do you go to those “folders” in Gmail or do you just search all my mail when looking for a particular email?”
That got me thinking….99% of the time I do a search of all my mail. I can easily search in Hotmail.
So my decision is made and I’m moving from Gmail to Hotmail. Here are some details and videos I watched which helped me make the big decision to go from Gmail to Hotmail.
Sweep Away Unwanted Mail
I love the idea of being able to sweep away email that I do not want to see now or in the future. I have some newsletters that I click “unsubscribe” every time I get them, but I still get them. Yes, it’s easy to hit delete, but I don’t even want to see the email in the first place.
Integrate SkyDrive With Hotmail
The integration of SkyDrive with Hotmail makes sending photos so easy. This is HUGE for me. I send a lot of photos and I’m tired of splitting it up into 5 emails to get all the pictures sent. Look at this video of how easy it is to do in Hotmail.
Alias Email Addresses
This feature will help me so much. I plan to create some aliases for newsletters, etc.
Spam Protection
This one was a no brainer for me. I have had an email address with Hotmail for some time, I just didn’t use it for my main email. When I would check it, there was no spam mail. I used this email address to sign up for things that I was unsure about which would be a perfect target for spam.
This last video is an overview of the Hotmail options, but it’s the video that sealed the Gmail to Hotmail deal for me.
I will be making the switch from Gmail to Hotmail next week and I will follow-up with directions on the process and let you know how it goes.
Disclosure: I am a Windows Champion and I received a Sony VAIO laptop to use for 1 year in exchange for my posts. All opinions about my move from Gmail to Hotmail are 100% my own.
Let’s Talk About Moving From Gmail to Hotmail!
What are your thoughts on the newest features on Hotmail? Have you moved from Gmail to Hotmail? Any advice?
Hi Michelle! Enjoyed reading about your switch from hotmail to gmail because I just made the reverse switch! I haven’t found the contacts feature in either service particularly useful, and managing a household address book is a problem all families have. My brother and I created http://www.conxt.com/moms to solve this. conXt is moms’ paper address book online – simple, private, useful, connected, and free. Moms simply import their email’s address book or whatever spreadsheet they’ve been keeping their contact info on, and then can update contact info, send holiday cards, plan events, back up contacts, and keep in touch at the click of a button! Please check us out and let us know what you think!
I’ve done this a couple times over the years switching back and forth between Hotmail and GMail. There used to be an import function in Hotmail to do this but it appears Microsoft has removed it and now recommends using TrueSwitch. The former method took a very long time to complete.
Using a mail client such as Windows Live or Outlook works well however is a bit tedious and slow for large folders but thorough. If you use this method I’d recommend moving no more than 300-500 messages at a time.
Here’s the official blog post for how to do this.. I’m not sure if the Contact linking section actually copies contacts from GMail to Hotmail or if it links them ( meaning they still reside on GMail and will be synced with Hotmail contacts). This is how the People App in Windows 8 works..
Obviously setting up a “send-as” email address for your GMail account is optional but probably useful on occasion at least.
http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2012/08/09/upgrade-from-gmail-to-outlook-com-in-5-easy-steps.aspx
Bryan
Good post. As a long time personal user of Hotmail, a few years ago when I created m y Google account and started using Gmail, it was to be for professional reasons only because of the stigma of having a Hotmail email address. And at the time, GMail was better. But since the new upgrades to Hotmail awhile ago was my first thoughts on possibly condensing down to the one email account for both personal and professional uses. But I was using a lot of Google Services at the time, and then got an Android cell phone, so thought it made more sense to keep using( acutally considered ditching all Microsoft services at that time altogether because I was trying to move away from them.) But the one service of Microsoft that kept my Hotmail ( or live.ca) account active was Skydrive. I liked having the 25 GB of free online storage for my photos AND documents. I didn’t like how Google didn’t offer one solution for this yet and Picasa web albums only offered 2 GB free storage.
Well, now that I have a Windows Phone ( which is a whole different story altogether on how that came to be) I have been recently thinking of condensing my email accounts to an all-in-one option. I don’t use Google Docs (Drive) anymore since I can store my Documents and Photos in Skydrive both on my PC and phone. There are some other features of GMail I was wanting to use recently that I couldn’t find in sending an email, that I can use with Hotmail. And even though, my Windows Phone syncs my Google account services, very well, I figure why use 2 different services if I can get all I need from one? Right? So I think for my purposes, you have solidified my decision to go ahead and either cancel my Google account or at least switch my Gmail, calendars and contacts to Windows Live/Hotmail. Sorry for the long post, but I felt I had to share my backstory on this same situation. Thanks again for this post!
Isn’t that funny how we go back and forth between the different services. I do the same thing. I have both Hotmail & Gmail because they each do certain things better. I love the integration of photos and SkyDrive with Hotmail….it makes it so convenient to send photos and documents and finding them again.
I also have a Windows Phone, but I haven’t switched to it 100% because of our plan. But I love how it integrates with everything online and with Facebook and Twitter & contacts.
Interesting to read, but I’m actually missing the “I did it” follow-up post..
Am making the move just cause I got a Windows Phone. Post and links in the comments were helpful 🙂 Thanks
Funny seeing this post after Gmail recently asked me to import my Hotmail. It seems that for me my Hotmail account seems to get all the spam and Gmail seems to do a pretty good job of filtering, but I’ve had my Hotmail account since before there was a such thing as Gmail, the skydrive integration looks pretty sweet I’ve been considering creating a fresh now Hotmail/Live Mail account.
Stop! I found an even easier way! Such a duh moment. 🙂
Do it this way and it will take minutes:
Easy Way (discovered after the hard way)
1-Install Windows Mail (part of Windows Live Essentials)
2-Add your Hotmail and Gmail accounts
3-Create a folder in the Hotmail account to match the Gmail IMAP/label folder
4-Drag and drop messages to move, or CTRL+Drag and Drop to copy between folders
5-Repeat for each Gmail folder’s contents, what’s in the inbox etc.
DONE! 🙂
Ariella, You are brilliant!!! I don’t know why I didn’t think of that either. I am going to do that tonight.
I was so excited to find that solution! Being a Mac person I didn’t know anything about the Windows Mail client. I tried it for fun tonight, saw that despite Hotmail’s POP3, Windows Mail treats it like IMAP and syncs! Then the lights went off: heeeeeeey! If it’s going to immitate IMAP, I’m gonna try the traditional IMAP folder moving technique, and it works! 😀
For addresses, log into Hotmail on the web, go to contacts, import, and gmail is a choice there. Some garbage entries get created but they’re easy to clean up.
For calendars, tell Google to export as .ICS and import into the Web interface, calendar section.
I didn’t think about it either because I knew Hotmail couldn’t do IMAP. Good to know that it syncs back to Hotmail. I have Outlook, so I’m going to try it using Outlook 2010.
Great! If Outlook doesn’t work by default, I think there’s an extra layer of connectivity that you can install called “Office Connect”. I’ve seen some articles on how that improves the sync between Outlook and Hotmail, and the way the articles talked about it they made it sound like it was necessary to install it. Maybe it’s because they were writing about an older version Office. I’m not sure. Either way, keep that in mind as a potential extra step.
Awesome! So glad the post was helpful to current hotmail users. I didn’t even think about that when I wrote it. 😀
This is a really interesting move. After switching to Gmail a while back I have never even thought about another online email client. But hotmail looks to have some great benefits.
I figured out how to switch:
https://plus.google.com/114937621656446068255/posts/YnZMu4SULjn
I have a tip!
Decide if you want to migrate messages in groups by folder through an intermediary step BEFORE you turn on POP3 forwarding from GMail to Hotmail. I turned that on and now my entire GMail history is coming into the Hotmail Inbox unsorted lol.
OOPS! 🙂 I’ll be working hard in the coming weeks re-sorting it all! Or, I should disable it and see if I can find a group move option… Common addresses are easy to Sweep on, it’s the messages from a myriad of sources dealing with the same topic that will be tough.
I’m interested in learning more about how to switch. My main concern is that like you I have tons of labels/IMAP folders and Hotmail is POP3 so I don’t know how to easily migrate mail from one folder on Gmail to a folder on Hotmail. I’m guessing the solution will involve getting GMail to fetch to a local e-mail client to create mail archives like .mbox, then import these into Hotmail (if it has a mail import feature — don’t know yet.)
Looking forward to your next article! 😀