This article explains multiple scenarios/techniques to switch from Gmail to Outlook in the simplest manner. This article is for users that wish to access their Gmail emails in MS Outlook or wants to completely off-board from their Gmail account and switch over to MS Outlook only.
Depending upon your requirement you can pick the method and resolve your problem. Here, we have demonstrated the step-by-step working of all methods with screenshots for better understanding.
Why Use Outlook Over Gmail?
For many individuals and business personals, emails are the most crucial part of their business. They need to make sure that they can have all-time access to their emails. But, being a web-based email client, it is not possible with Gmail. Due to this many users tries to switch their data to an email client that provides the access to emails even when a user is offline. And, the best desktop-based email client is none other than MS Outlook.
Moreover, emails on desktop-based email clients can be only access from the system itself. Although it restricts you to access data from anywhere and any device, it provides better security, as everything is only saved on your system. No one can crack or access your business/personal emails without access to the device where it is configured.
Best Methods to Switch From Gmail to MS Outlook
If in case you want to access your Gmail account in desktop Outlook, then the best way is to IMAP configure your Gmail account with Outlook. This way as soon as you open your MS Outlook application, all the email received in Gmail account will be accessed in Outlook application. And, its quite simple to configure it also, follow the steps below to do this:
1. First change the settings of your Gmail account, for that open your Gmail, click on the Gear icon and click on “Show all Settings”. In the settings window, go to Forward & POP/IMAP and enable IMAP from the given options. Click on Save Changes and Exit.
2. Now open your MS Outlook application to configure your Gmail account with it. For this first, go to the File tab,
3. Here, you need to Add Account button, and provide the details of your Gmail account & hit Next.
4. MS Outlook will process the request and Oauthenticate with your Gmail account.
5. Once the authentication is complete, Outlook will start fetching Gmail account emails and other items into the application.
6. After completion of the fetching, Outlook will notify you and show the status as complete in the title bar.
Now, you can keep accessing your Gmail account emails from your Outlook applications as well. As Outlook stores the configured emails on desktop, even at the time of unavailability of internet connection you can access your emails from your machine.
But wait! What if a wants to switch Gmail email to Outlook and deactivate their Gmail account.
As the above method is IMAP configured and there are possibilities of error whenever you open your MS Outlook application. It means whenever you will open tries to open Outlook configured with a Gmail account, you will get error notifications.
Moreover, if the application crashed or the OS system changes all the data will be lost permanently as MS Outlook is installed in your windows computer, and changing OS will lead to permanent loss of data in it.
Note: It is recommended to save a backup copy of your Outlook account into your drive other than OS installed.
And, the above methods don’t import emails into Outlook account. For that, you need to backup Gmail emails via an automated tool in PST format and then import the file it into MS Outlook.
This way you can access your all Gmail emails from MS Outlook and deactivate your Gmail account without any second thoughts of facing errors.
Why Choose Automated Tool?
The reason why we are recommending using an automated tool. Its due to the fact the Google only allows to export emails in MBOX format only. So, there isn’t any manual technique using which you can get your Gmail emails in Outlook supported (.pst) format.
There are many automated tools available in the market that offers this support to export emails in PST format, the best one is SysTools Gmail Backup.
Apart from just emails export into .pst format, these automated tool provides the facility features like category, date-range, folder filter to only switch selective emails from Gmail to Outlook application.
Once the emails are converted/exported, follow the below steps to import them into your MS Outlook application:
1. Open the MS Outlook application on your machine
2. Click on the File tab (at the top-left corner) and then use the Open & Export tab to choose the “Import/Export” option.
3. Now you will get an Import/Export wizard, where you need to select “import from a program or file” option. Then click on the Next button to proceed further.
4. In the next window, choose the option “Outlook data file (.pst)” from the list and then click on Next.
5. Now, browse the .pst file exported from your Gmail account and click on Next.
6. In this window, select the folder in the Outlook account to store the Gmail emails.
7. Finally, hit on Finish button to begin the process.
How to Deactivate your Gmail Account?
Now if you want to off-board from Gmail and switch from Gmail to Outlook, then you should deactivate your Gmail account also. It helps you to protect your crucial business information, saved passwords, invoices, documents, etc.
Tips: As per the update from Google, then the account inactive for more than 24months will be deleted from the Google database.
Final Thoughts
In this article, we have discussed two best ways to switch from Gmail to Outlook application. Here, we have considered two scenarios, first is for users who want to access their emails in Gmail and Outlook both. And, second is for users that want to off-board from Gmail and switch over to Outlook. Depending upon your scenario, you can pick the recommended method over and execute the task without any error.
