---
title: "Import from Gmail"
description: "Copy a Gmail or Google Workspace mailbox with an app password, labels included."
url: "https://openemail.uk/docs/knowledge/trust/import/gmail"
area: "Knowledge base"
category: "Moving in"
---

# Import from Gmail

Copy a Gmail or Google Workspace mailbox with an app password, labels included.

## Before you start

- You need 2-Step Verification on your Google Account. Google only offers app passwords once it is on.
- On a work or school account, your administrator has to allow app passwords and IMAP. If the app password page says the setting is not available, ask them.
- The old mailbox is only ever read. Nothing in it is moved, marked as read or deleted, so it keeps working exactly as before while the import runs and afterwards.

## Make an app password and start

1. Open myaccount.google.com/apppasswords and sign in.
2. Type a name such as OpenEmail and choose Create.
3. Copy the 16 characters Google shows. Spaces do not matter.
4. In OpenEmail, open Migrations, then From a mailbox. Enter the old address, paste the app password and choose Check mailbox. It signs in once and lists the folders with how many messages each holds.
5. Choose the address the mail lands on, decide whether spam and trash come too, and choose Start import. You can close the page: History shows the progress.

## What comes across

- The mailbox is read from All Mail, so every message comes once, with its Gmail labels as labels here. Inbox mail lands in Inbox, sent mail in Sent, and starred and read state are kept.
- Google lets about 2.5 GB a day out of a mailbox over IMAP. A large mailbox therefore takes several days: the import pauses when Google slows it down, History says when it carries on, and it picks up at the same message.
- A message the address already holds is skipped, so running an import twice, or after uploading an export file, adds only what is missing.
- Google gives contacts and calendars to no app password. Export them with Google Takeout, then upload the archive under From a file: the .vcf and .ics files inside it are read as contacts and calendar events.

## Afterwards

- The app password is kept sealed until the import finishes, for 30 days at most, then wiped. It is never shown again and never written to a log.
- When the import is done, delete the app password at the provider. Run again, which copies only the mail that arrived since, asks for a new one.

## If it does not work

- The sign-in is refused: use the app password, not the password of the Google Account, and the full address as it is written in Gmail.
- The import stops with Paused in History: the provider no longer accepts the app password. Make a new one and choose Enter a new password on the import. It carries on where it stopped.

## Related pages

- [Bring your old mailbox](https://openemail.uk/docs/knowledge/trust/import.md): Everything an import brings, from a live mailbox or from an export file.
- [Any other mail server](https://openemail.uk/docs/knowledge/trust/import/other.md): Copy a mailbox from any provider that offers IMAP.