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How to Migrate Your Student Google Mail to Your Alumni Account

These instructions are for moving student Google Mail. If you are unsure as to whether your @stanford.edu mail account is hosted in Google or Microsoft, open a browser and vist webmail.stanford.edu. Your email will display in either Microsoft Outlook or Stanford Google Mail.

IMAP is a protocol that allows you to use a desktop email client such as Apple Mail or Microsoft Outlook to migrate your mail with folders and labels intact. You can use this to move your student G Suite (formerly Google Apps) mail to your alumni email account.

Note:  GSB alumni have slightly different instructions than Stanford alumni but the process is the same.

Forward your @stanford.edu mail

About four months after you graduate, Stanford automatically forwards your @stanford.edu mail to your alumni email address. The university keeps this forwarding in place for two years. Stanford also forwards mail for GSB alumni to their GSB alumni email addresses for two years.

Before you start migrating your mail, forward your @stanford.edu mail to your alumni email address so you only have to migrate your mail once.

  1. Go to Stanford Accounts.
  2. Click Manage, click the Email tab, then click Forward email.
  3. Follow the onscreen instructions.
    We recommend that you select  DO NOT keep a copy stored in your @stanford.edu mailbox.

Migrate your @stanford.edu mail

Note: To have your files, emails, calendars, and contacts quickly and securely copied between Google accounts, you can use a paid service called VaultMe for a small fee. Visit VaultMe to learn more about this option.

  1. Click on the orange "Try VaultMe Now" button.
  2. Select Copy or Migrate From and choose the Google Workspace option.
  3. Sign in to Google with your Stanford account credentials.
  4. Sign in to your Alumni Account and select preferences (email only, docs you own, docs shared with you, Drive files and folder in trash, calendar, contacts/contact groups, etc)
  5. Enter payment information, and select Confirm & Go.

Step 1. Create a Google account password.

To use IMAP with an email client, you need to use a Google account password instead of your SUNet ID password. If you have not yet done so, create a Google account password for each account. Use the following links to log in to both your Stanford and your alumni accounts to set your passwords:

Notes:

  • Your Google account password must be different from your SUNet ID password.
  • If you have set up mail on your mobile device, you may already have created a Google account password.
  • If you change your Google account password during this process, be sure to change it on any mobile device previously set up to use the previous password. 

Step 2. Enable IMAP on both your Stanford and your alumni accounts.

Use the following links to login to both accounts, then enable IMAP on each account using instructions provided by Google.

Step 3. Configure your desktop email client.

Configure your desktop email client for IMAP connections to both your Stanford account and your alumni account. Use the following email addresses to configure these connections:

  • Stanford account email address: SUNetID@stanford.edu
  • Alumni account email address:
    • Stanford Alumni Association: AlumniUsername@alumni.stanford.edu
    • Stanford GSB Alumni Association: AlumniUsername@alumni.gsb.stanford.edu

To migrate your mail, you need to make two concurrent connections, one to each account. Use your Stanford account for the first connection and your alumni account for the second connection:

You should now have two IMAP connections from your mail client, one to each account.

Step 4. Migrate your mail.

Note: Using drag and drop to migrate your mail is not recommended. You could lose your mail if an interruption occurs.

Once you have set up your connections to both of your two email accounts, use your email client's Copy function to copy mail from your Stanford account to your alumni account. If you use a different mail client than the ones referenced here, you may need to re-create your folders or labels manually.

Tip: If you have a lot of mail to migrate, try copying it in blocks of a few months or a year at a time. Do a test block of a few months . Then, increase or decrease the size of the next blocks depending on how long the test block took to copy.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to allow sufficient time for your mail migration to complete.

  • If you are using Apple Mail, click Window, then click Activity to ensure that all messages have migrated.
  • If you are using Microsoft Outlook, click Send/Receive, then click Show Progress to ensure that all messages have migrated.

Step 5. Exit your email client.

After you have completed the migration of your email from your Stanford account to your alumni account, close both connections and exit the mail client.

More information

Last modified April 23, 2021