I need to forward old Gmail messages in bulk

We’re getting threatened with our email cutting off, and I want to forward emails from previous years to a different account. I installed Thunderbird and downloaded the Inbox, but it doesn’t allow for this either.

Is there some Gmail or Thunderbird extension or something that allows me to choose hundreds of emails and forward them by typing in the receiving address just once?

Once you have the inbox, why would you need to forward them?

You shouldn’t need to forward them all. You should be able to just copy from account to the other, assuming both accounts are IMAP. I’m not sure about thunderbird but in outlook you can add both accounts at once, and literally drag and drop from one inbox to the other. This has the added benefit that the messages do not get mangled by the forwarding process (not to mention losing the original “From” address).

I need these old emails to be in the Inbox of the new account for REAL, visible and searchable on the web, not just one computer. Will this copying accomplish that?

If the new account is IMAP, moving them from the imported mailbox to that account’s inbox will copy them all to the server.

Yes – assuming both are IMAP accounts and that you have correctly identified the IMAP inboxes, and not mistaken your local inbox for them – you are copying them to the IMAP inbox folder that exists on the mail server.

Does Thunderbird allow you to drag and drop emails around? Why don’t you give it a try? Add both accounts in thunderbird and try to drag and drop one email from one (imap) inbox to the other. Then check the gmail web interface to see if it’s really there.

Thank you all so much! Thunderbird copying does seem to be pushing all of them to the web-based inbox. It’s just going to take a number of hours to push 5847 emails. Then we can delete them from the company main inbox and get some room.

Ok, I have another question.

Is it possible to just see the email subject lines and forward the emails by copying into the other inbox? Or do I have to download 5 years of email to this local machine and then copy thousands to the other inbox, and push them back to Google? My copying stopped before I wanted it to, and now it only wants to download things.

Also: When I get done with this, how do I delete the emails on the local computer and not on the server?

Actually, if they are both gmail accounts, you might be able to do a direct transfer by enabling POP in the old account, and then pop them all off into the new account. I believe gmail allows you to do this. See if this helps:

If this works, then forget about the whole copying business with thunderbird.