Change of provider: How to take old emails with you

Taking emails with you when changing providers is not as complicated as many think. Here you can read how you can transfer your old emails to your new account in just a few steps.

Transfer the emails to Thunderbird

The easiest way to take your emails with you is to list the accounts in a program like Thunderbird and then simply copy them from folder to folder.

1. First, add both the old and new accounts to Thunderbird. To do this, click on "Tools" and then "Account Settings". Under "Account Actions" at the bottom left you can add the accounts. Make sure that you have integrated both accounts with IMAP. You can find out the differences between POP3 and IMAP in another practical tip.
2. After both accounts have been added, they appear in the bar on the left.
3. Now select a folder from the old account and mark all emails in the folder with the key combination "CTRL" + "A" under Windows or "CMD" + "A" under Mac OS.
4. In the last step, right-click on the marked emails. Then under "Copy to" or "Move to" select the new account and the corresponding folder to which you want to take the emails.
5. The transfer can take a few minutes, depending on how many emails you have and the size of the attachments. You can now repeat this step with all the folders in your old account.

In another practical tip, we will show you how you can use Thunderbird to create filters for emails.