Email: switch from GMail to Posteo - so take your emails with you

If you would like to switch your mail account from GMail to Posteo, you can easily take your mails with you to the new mailbox. The economical and fairly secure e-mail provider based in Berlin offers an e-mail collection service for this. Here we explain how you can use this to transfer your messages from the Google servers.

Change of provider: From GMail to Posteo - the preparation

First you have to prepare your GMail mailbox for the switch:

1. Open GMail and navigate to the settings via the gear wheel in the top right.
2. In the settings, select the "Forwarding and POP / IMAP" tab.
3. Here you set the point at "Activate POP for all messages (including those already downloaded)" (see picture) and then click on "Save changes" at the bottom.

If you have also activated the two-step activation in your Google account, you must generate a so-called "application-specific password" to enable login via Posteo:

1. To do this, open the page with the settings for the confirmation in two steps and click on the "App-specific passwords" tab. At the very bottom, select the "Manage application-specific passwords" button.
2. Now enter any name for the password (see picture) and then click on "Generate password". The created password now appears in a yellow field.

Then: Set up the Posteo collection service for GMail-Post

Now you can set up the message collection service in the Posteo web interface to forward your GMail emails to your new mailbox:

1. Open Posteo Webmail and go to "Settings" in the top right corner.
2. Then click on "E-Mail Collection Services" in the list on the left and then select "Add New Collection Service".
3. In the input mask, select "Mail" under "Service" (see picture). Enter your full Gmail address as "Email".
4. The password is the normal password that you use for the Google login. Exception: If you use the login in two steps, you must enter the app-specific password generated above.
5. At the top you have to check the box "Activate group service". Posteo recommends the setting "Delete emails after collection" so that the forwarded emails do not jam in your GMail inbox.
6. Finally, click on "Save" to activate the mail collection service.

• Now wait a few minutes until the first emails from your old GMail inbox appear in the Posteo interface. Depending on the number of GMail messages, the synchronization process can take several hours.
• Once all the existing messages have been transferred, only new mails will be forwarded to your Posteo mail. Posteo's collection service is automatically deactivated after three months, but can be reactivated for three months at any time.
• If the Posteo collection service is not working, there are two possible workarounds: Either you check the latest activities in the Google account for an "unusual activity" from Posteo and click here "I have recognized these unusual activities as originating from me", or you enable two-step verification to use an application-specific password (as described above) instead of your normal Google password.

If you would like to finally delete your GMail account, continue reading on the next page.