Personal Gmail to M365 migration – any non-manual way?

Posted by ParticularOne4030@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 19 comments

Hey all, I’m migrating about 40 users from personal/free Gmail (not Google Workspace) to Microsoft 365 and need to move emails, contacts, calendars, and Drive data. I’ve spoken to BitTitan/Avepoint and it looks like it’s IMAP only for consumer Gmail, so everything outside of mail becomes manual. From what I’ve seen, IMAP really does only handle email and skips contacts/calendars entirely.

I’ve looked at VaultMe which seems promising since it claims to migrate emails, contacts, calendars and files all in one go, but there’s not much real-world feedback out there.

Happy to pay for proper software or licensing if it actually saves time I just don’t want to burn a whole weekend doing exports and imports. Has anyone found a solid tool or workflow that actually handles this properly without turning into a manual nightmare?

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avan199@reddit

Most people are mixing Google Workspace with personal Gmail. Most tools like MigrationWiz, Skykick, etc. use IMAP. This only moves emails, not contacts, calendars, or Drive. That's a major drawback.

Manual methods will work, but moving 40 users takes time and complicates your process.

VaultMe, on the other hand, is a better option as it uses OAuth and can migrate more than just emails. Still, it is not simple, expect some cleanup.

So, you cannot completely eliminate manual work, but you can reduce the effort a lot.

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ParticularOne4030@reddit (OP)

VaultMe looks solid with OAuth and pulling everything, but why isn’t it simple? What cleanup are we actually talking about? Has anyone actually used them before for a migration?

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avan199@reddit

My point is that the migration part is generally easy. However, cleanup, i.e., post migration, is different between Google and Microsoft because:

* Sometimes recurring calendar events don’t perfectly map or may create duplicates.
*With no proper field mappings, contacts may end up duplicated or misplaced.
*Gmail labels and Outlook folders are different, so they don’t always convert cleanly.
*Drive files easily copied, but sharing or permissions need to be reconfigured.

Therefore, VaultMe transfers more data than IMAP. However, the issue is that it does not fully normalize how Google and Microsoft 365 handle data.

Personally, I have not run a full migration with VaultMe at a big scale. But other similar migrators or tools work fine for bulk transferring. But you still need to do manual cleanup afterward.

If you want to try it, test with a couple of users first to see how clean the result is before you use it for all 40 users.

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Similar_Election_949@reddit

SysTools IMAP to Microsoft 365 Migration tool is all you need. Full GUI support, no scripts or code. You can try the demo version for free.

https://www.google.com/search?q=SysTools+IMAP+to+Microsoft+365+Migration+tool

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