---
title: "Import from iCloud Mail"
description: "Copy an iCloud mailbox, its contacts and its calendars with an app-specific password."
url: "https://openemail.uk/docs/knowledge/trust/import/icloud"
area: "Knowledge base"
category: "Moving in"
---

# Import from iCloud Mail

Copy an iCloud mailbox, its contacts and its calendars with an app-specific password.

## Before you start

- Your Apple Account needs two-factor authentication, which Apple requires for app-specific passwords.
- Use your iCloud Mail address, the one ending in icloud.com, me.com or mac.com, not another address you sign in to Apple with.
- 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-specific password and start

1. Open account.apple.com and sign in.
2. Under Sign-In and Security, choose App-Specific Passwords, then the plus button.
3. Type a name such as OpenEmail, choose Create and copy the password Apple shows.
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

- Every mailbox folder becomes a label, with Inbox, Sent, Junk and Deleted Messages filed as Inbox, Sent, Spam and Trash. Read and flagged state are kept.
- Contacts and calendars come over the same password when you leave their switches on. Contacts join no audience, and nobody on an imported event is emailed.
- A message the address already holds is skipped, so running an import twice, or after uploading an export file, adds only what is missing.

## 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 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.