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Migrating Emails to Lookafter Using IMAP
When you are transferring to Lookafter Email Hosting, you will most likely want to migrate your emails from the previous hosting server to Lookafter server as well. This guide shows you the steps on how you can transfer your emails between the servers using a mail client that supports IMAP feature like Ms Outlook, Thunderbird and Mac Mail.
Note that the steps below have to be performed before your domain's MX is updated to Lookafter server.
Step 1: Set Up IMAP For Your Old Email Account
(If you already have an existing IMAP profile set up for your old email account, skip to Step 2.)
- Obtain the IMAP settings of your old email account from your previous email hosting provider.
- Download and install the mail client (Ms Outlook/Thunderbird/Mac Mail) on your PC.
- In the mail client, set up an IMAP profile for your old email account using the IMAP settings provided by your previous hosting provider.
- Let the emails sync from the previous email hosting server to your mail client.
Step 2: Create Email Account on Lookafter System
Follow this guide to create your email account on Lookafter system: Creating a new user account.
Note that you need to have admin privilege to perform this step. If you do not have the avomaster access, please consult your voadmin user to create your email account.
*Important: Make sure the created email account is assigned with sufficient email space that could accommodate all emails which you will be transferring over in the later steps.
Step 3: Set Up IMAP For Your New Email Account
After your email account has been created on Lookafter system, you can setup IMAP with this new email account in the same mail client your used in Step 1.
Refer to the following guides on how to setup the email account using Lookafter IMAP settings on different mail clients:
Step 4: Move Emails Between Accounts in Mail Client
By now, you should have 2 IMAP accounts created in your mail client. To migrate your emails, simply drag-and-drop the emails or mail folders from the old email account (created in Step 1) to the new email account (created in Step 3).
The emails moved to the new email account will then be synced to Lookafter server. The sync process may take some time if you have a lot of emails.
Once all emails have been moved, you may inform Lookafter team to update your domain's MX record.
After your domain's MX record have been updated, you should start receiving emails on the new email account (or at Lookafter webmail).
As the MX update involves DNS change (which requires global cache to fully propagate to take effect), you may still receive emails on your old email account within 24 to 72 hours. You can move these emails to the new account to sync them to Lookafter server during this time.
Once you see there is no more email received in the old account (usually after 72 hours upon MX update), then you can safely delete the old account from the mail client.
