[How-to] Switch COMPLETELY from Gmail to Outlook/Live.com

[Jake_M]

Contacts

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• Go to http://gmail.com
• On the left side, click the dropdown that says 'Gmail', and click 'Contacts'
• At the top of the contacts list, click the 'More' dropdown, select "Export..."
• Select the contact group, most likely 'All Contacts' and then select 'Outlook CSV'
• Click 'Export' and save it somewhere(contacts.csv)
• Go to Sign In
• "Add people to your contact list" should be available, select "Import from file"
• Select the file you downloaded earlier
• Be sure to clean up and duplicate contacts by clicking the "Manage" dropdown on the main People website and selecting 'Clean up contacts'

Mail

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There are 2 ways to really go about this. Create an email address(@outlook.com, @live.com) or use your existing Gmail account. If you really want to go through the full switch, I recommend just going with making a new email address. (Skip down to the bullet about linking Gmail if not)

• To create a new email address, go to http://signup.live.com (note if you have a Windows Phone, you should have one)
• Once you have your new Microsoft account, click the Settings gear at the top right, and click "More Mail Settings"
• Click "Your email accounts"
• Click "Add send-and-receive account"
• Enter your Gmail(or other) information
• Over the course of a few hours, all of your mail should be imported automatically, and you should even be able to "send-as" your Gmail account.

Calendar

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• Go to http://google.com/calendar
• On the left side where your calendars are listed, click the dropdown and click 'Settings'
• In the 'My Calendars' category, select Export Calendars
• The file will be a .zip, you need to extract the .ics file out of the ZIP.(calendar.ics)
• Go to Sign in to your Microsoft account
• Above the calendar, click "Import"
• Select the .ics file and click Import

SkyDrive

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• Sign in to Gmail and find your Google Drive folder.
• Select All(shift + A),click More, click Download, and then save your Google Docs as Office documents on your desktop.
• Download SkyDrive here: Microsoft SkyDrive - Microsoft Windows
• Go to your SkyDrive account , and then drag your files from your desktop to your SkyDrive folder(it will automatically sync)

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F.A.Q.

Can I use "TrueSwitch" to do this?
Not anymore, as TrueSwitch has shutdown as of May 15, 2013.

Why should I switch?
Outlook is more modern, has more features(subjectively) and Google is dropping support for EAS.

My Gmail emails aren't getting forwarded instantly, why?
Well this tutorial is ideal if you want to completely rid yourself of any Google services, so you'd want to change all things that originally send to your Gmail(bills, newsletters) to go to your new Outlook email

What do I do if I have created a Live ID and subsequent Xbox Gamertag that is associated with another email address from a different provider?
Check out this post (thanks BitPusher2600)

Will this work to upgrade from Hotmail?
Yes, Outlook is essentially a giant overhaul of Hotmail. See here

My LiveID is an alias to a domain other than Hotmail or Outlook (such as Gmail). TrueSwitch does not seem to be working. What can I do?
Check out this post (thanks Matt M.)

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If you have any other FAQ-type questions, please PM them to me and I'll add them to this post.

 

[Hiiiiiiiii]

 

[brmiller1976]

Outstanding!

Once we get Windows users in the swing of things, we should push forward and help migrate Mac, iOS and even Android users to Microsoft services as well.

 

[Jake_M]

http://www.photoshopgurus.com/images/tutorials/screenshot/print-screen-key.jpg

I did, I used a lighting effect/blurring to highlight the button of choice. My Photoshop skills are just bad.

 

[a5cent]

Great! Exactly what this site needs right now! Well done! Thank you! If we can collect all the questions pertaining to making that switch in this thread, it would be worth making sticky.

 

[djrakowski]

Thanks, Jakeeeee! I used this guide to start the process of transitioning away from Google services. Mail has been importing this earlier this morning (looks like it's going to take the entire day for everything to dump into my outlook account), and setting up calendars was a breeze. I still have a Google Voice account I'm using to hold onto an old cellphone number (and if I could get people to stop calling it, I'd be done with GV as well).

As far as I can tell, there's no way to set up recurring tasks in the Outlook/Hotmail calendar. If I can figure that out, I'll move my to-dos from Toodledo immediately.

 

[Sam Sabri]

This is awesome. Should be handy for those wanting to make the switch all the way and another example of why the Windows Phone Central forums are the best around. Stuff like this should make it to the home page

 

[HeyCori]

After Google's announcement to move away from EAS, I advise more people to sign up for Outlook/AOL/Yahoo. IMO, using consumers as pawns in your "battle" against Microsoft is completely unacceptable. Fight by making a better product, not by screwing over users with inferior products like CardDAV. And what I've read from other users, Google has changed this so-called "open protocol" so that it's as proprietary as EAS. This, along with other inferior "open" formats like WebM, is just another example of Google pushing proprietary formats while claiming they're open and free. False!

 

[irvin792]

It is not letting me change my Microsoft account email :|

 

[fwaits]

As far as I can tell, there's no way to set up recurring tasks in the Outlook/Hotmail calendar. If I can figure that out, I'll move my to-dos from Toodledo immediately.

When you start a new event on the calendar, at the bottom below the start and end date is a link to add more details. That's the more advanced mode which shows many more options, including recurrence settings.

 

[fwaits]

It is not letting me change my Microsoft account email :|

What does it tell you? Error of some kind? If you change the email address of the Microsoft account, keep in mind you will have to hard reset your WP and add the newly named account back in as there is no way to change the primary MS account on a WP once it's entered.

 

[irvin792]

What does it tell you? Error of some kind? If you change the email address of the Microsoft account, keep in mind you will have to hard reset your WP and add the newly named account back in as there is no way to change the primary MS account on a WP once it's entered.

no error, its not even giving me any sort of option to change it. It just says "The email address associated with your Microsoft account can't be changed" then the disclaimer about the hard reset and such, the drop down and the box to put your email in is gone.....:|

 

[4Tiles]

Much easier way to do all of this, use the free TrueSwitch site:

https://secure5.trueswitch.com/hotmail/

 

[rdubmu]

The only issue I have had is if you have a customized contact description like say mobile work on Gmail, it doesn't sync to hotmail
Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express

 

[Malmer]

If you are using a custom domain with google apps you can set up the same for Outlook on domains.live.com.

 

[rdjward]

So just a little confused. If I have a gmail address as my login for my Microsoft accounts (ie Skydrive etc...) can this be changed over to simply have a new @outlook.com email or must I create an entirely new account and migrate? Ideally I'd like to not reformat my Lumia 920.

Also, is it really worth it to bother switching if I'm still grandfathered in? I'd have to update alot of accounts that use my gmail as a login as I'd prefer to have it all unified to one account.

 

[kasperholdum]

Need a complete guide for moving custom domain from gmail to outlook.com. Been wanting to get away from google for ages, but having multiple users on the domain the amount of work seems insurmountable.

 

[freekwel]

Need a complete guide for moving custom domain from gmail to outlook.com. Been wanting to get away from google for ages, but having multiple users on the domain the amount of work seems insurmountable.

First hit on googling "Domain outlook.com"

 

[freekwel]

Only thing keeping me from canceling my gmail account is the fact that I use Google Calendar and have a calendar shared with my girlfriend who has an Android phone. I've looked into it: it doesn't seem like you can add calendars other than Gmail calendars on Android.

Anyone got a solution for this?

 

[rdjward]

Only thing keeping me from canceling my gmail account is the fact that I use Google Calendar and have a calendar shared with my girlfriend who has an Android phone.

Haha "December 17th, date night possible action afterwards?".