The cross-platform migrations of email include the migration from Gmail to Office 365, Outlook to Zoho Mail, and any server-based platforms. This process is called cross-platform email migration. The most important part when changing email platforms is maintaining integrity.

Maintaining integrity in an email means more than just moving data; it means maintaining the completeness and accuracy of the data being transferred, as well as keeping your email secure. If you are reading this, you are going to learn about how to maintain email integrity during cross-platform email migration using simple steps. Additionally, you’ll also know the common risks of email migration. Moreover, you will also learn the way to maintain email integrity. In addition, you’ll also learn how you can complete your email migration without losing email integrity. Continue reading this article for information on how to perform an email migration while maintaining email integrity.

Common Risks When Migrating Between Two Platforms

Migrating emails across different platforms raises some risks that may. Here are some of the common risks that you need to be aware of.

Loss of Data: If your migration is not completed or configured correctly, it is possible that some of your emails may never be recovered.

Corrupted Attachments: Migration of large files and unsupported formats may corrupt your account.

Metadata Changes: Changes in Email headers, timestamps, read/unread status, or sender details is common issue during the email migration.

Hierarchy Issues: The Source platform folder structure is not mapped properly with the target platform.

Security Risks: If the sensitive emails are not encrypted, then the risk of data breach arises.

These were the common risks that users face during the cross-platform Email migration.

Best Practices to Maintain Email Integrity

Below are some proven best practices that ensure integrity during cross-platform email migration

Pre-Migration Planning:

·         Before migration start first with analysis of the source and destination platforms.

·         Identify the total number of users, the mailbox size, and the number.

·         Check compatibility issues before migration.

·         The migration process has become a risky process without proper planning.

Make Complete Backup:

Create and take a full backup before the m migration process.

Use Reliable Email Converter:

Manual migration is useful, but sometimes it may create errors that cause data loss; in that case, use a reliable and trustworthy converter.

These are some best practices you can do before start migration process. Now, let’s try to migrate emails across other platforms while maintaining integrity using manual methods.

Manual Ways of email migrations with integrity

Below are some manual steps that you can use to migrate emails while maintaining integrity.

Step 1. Keep Backup

1.      Add your source email account in email clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird, and Apple Mail.

2.      Export your emails in PST/MBOX/EML formats, and after export, check 4 to 5 random email attachments and content.

Step 2. Configure Accounts

Configure the source and destination email accounts in the same email clients with the help of IMAP. (Do not use POP)

Step 3. Copy Emails Folder Wise

1.      Select emails individually from the Inbox, Sent, and Drafts.

2.      Copy emails by dragging and dropping in destination folders. (Don’t move the first copy for safety purposes.).

Step 4. Migrate Bulk

Do only 200 to 300 emails in bulk at a time; more than 300 emails are not safe. Give some time after every bulk copy to sync properly

Step 5. Verify After Migration

Match email count in both source and destination, open emails randomly, and do checks in date and time, sender and receiver, and attachments.

Step 6: Check Read/Unread

1.      Check some emails by reading/unreading, and confirm.

2.      Verify emails by flags and important ones.

Step 7. Final Process

When you confirm that all your emails are migrated correctly, then archive or disable your source mailbox and store the backup safely.

By following every single step, you can easily migrate all emails with integrity. These steps have few limitations that you must be aware of.

Limitations of Manual Migration

·         You need a strong internet connection slow internet connection may corrupt your email account.

·         The manual migration requires folder-wise copy, which takes too much time in the case of large mailboxes.

·         Manual steps have more chances of errors, like emails being skipped, wrong folder mapping, or duplicate email creation.

·         Detailed Logs and reports are not available in the manual migration, due to which the verification of migration is difficult.

These are the few limitations of using the manual way for migration. However, you can try the next method to do your migration safely.

Email Migration While Maintaining Email Integrity Professionally

Now, you know the manual steps of email migration, while a manual solution will fail in some cases. In such a case, you can try the BitRecover Smart PST to MBOX converter program that will migrate all your emails with integrity and folder hierarchy.

Steps of Conversion Process for Migration

1.      Open the application on your computer PC and click on the next button to start.

2.      Now, choose the option “folder or files” as per your need and click next.

3.      Then, select the folder of the Mailbox that you want to migrate and hit the next button.

4.      Select the saving option “MBOX” and set the file destination, and click on the next button to start.

5.      Finally, the conversion process is started.

By using these steps, you can easily migrate all emails without losing email integrity.

Final Thoughts

In this article, you learn how to maintain email integrity during cross-platform email migration using simple steps. This article will also share the manual and professional methods of migration, although the manual solution has some limitations. On the other hand, the use of suggest tool will make email migration in cross platform easy. Now it's totally up to you which practices you are going to do for email migration in cross-platform with integrity.