Bridging the Middle

The process to make the switch from Yahoo Mail to Gmail is not well documented.  There are plenty of pages dedicated to this topic, but mainly are rehashes of the same clicks-and-picks without the reasoning.  To help one make the change from your current online provider, Google has created a simple series of instructions to assist the process.  I found the list lacking of some critical steps as well.  I will detail fully the capabilities that drove me to switch to Gmail in another post shortly.

My recommended process would be to:

1. Clean-up the structure of your Yahoo account by removing any unnecessary email folders or contact categories.  You don’t need to spend lots of time but make sure the organizational structure of folders and contacts is up-to-date.  These will be used to map to new items in Gmail.
2. Signup for a Gmail account using first.last@gmail.com (this increasingly is a standard and will be good if you use the account for anything professional or to tie to other social media outlets).
3. Contacts (access from list in left column)
   • Create Gmail Groups for each of your Yahoo Categories.
   • Export Yahoo contacts to your local computer using CSV and import to Gmail.
   • Check that the same number of contacts is in each system and check a few most-used contacts to make sure the proper contact information transferred.
4. Email
   • Create Gmail labels for each of your Yahoo Folders from the ‘Settings’ area.  This will allow Gmail to automatically populate assign the label during the import process.
   • Gmail has partnered with TrueSwitch to power the importing of email.  Go to Gmail Settings -> Accounts and Import and follow the instructions.  Note that I did not have a good experience using TrueSwitch to import contacts which is why I recommend the manual process above.
   • Monitor the importing as it will take several days.  Gmail will add a label to the emails for the importing account name as well as the correct Label that matched your Yahoo categories.
   • Create filters to have specific emails by-pass showing up in your Inbox and going automatically to a Label.  This is a bit confusing to do.  Select the email, then action of “Filter messages like these” and the two key selections are to “Skip the Inbox (Archive It)” and “Apply the Label”.
5. Calendar
   • Yes, you can export your Yahoo calendar and import it easily into Google Calendar.  Follow these simple steps that require first saving to your local computer.

That’s it.  Now you can announce your new email to others as desired.  I would also suggest setting up your email signature (in Settings) and hiding Chat in the user interface if you don’t use it (at bottom of page).

Another decision to make is whether to disable your existing Yahoo account.  I would not.  First, they are always people who do not update their contact information and will continue to email your old account.  Second, there are plenty of services that you’ve signed up for that you will need to slowly transition over to your new email information.  I put these into a new folder and would take 15 minutes every few days to slog through the transition.

Good resources for new Gmail users are the About.com Gmail Overview and Jim’s Gmail Tips.

Have you made the switch and found other steps critical to ensure a smooth transition?  Let me know what I missed or if there are even better resources available.

This entry was posted on January 2, 2010 at 9:42 AM and is filed under Email. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.