Move a mailbox to a different provider

If you are changing where your email is hosted, for example from an IMAP host to Microsoft 365, TALISK_HQ can carry its record of your mail across so you keep your history, your categories, your rules and your action items.

What this does, and what it does not

TALISK_HQ stores its own reference for every message. Those references belong to the mailbox they came from, so when your mail moves to a new host they all have to be re-pointed. That is what this does.

It does not move your mail. Your mail provider does that, and it has to be done first. Moving mail between hosts is a job for your provider's own tools or your IT support.

Do it in this order

Set up the new mailbox with your provider.
Have your provider move the mail into it.
Only then, in TALISK_HQ, open Settings, go to the Email tab, and click Move to Outlook on the account.

If you run it before the mail has been moved, TALISK_HQ tells you the new mailbox looks empty and asks you to move the mail first. That is not a failure and there is no setting to change: it is telling you the steps are out of order.

What you will see

TALISK_HQ first checks how many of your messages it can track. It needs to recognise almost all of them before it will move anything, because a message it cannot recognise is one it could lose track of. If too few can be tracked it stops and tells you, without changing anything.

Then you sign in to the new mailbox, and TALISK_HQ shows you what it found: how many messages it matched, and how many it did not. Nothing is changed until you confirm.

Messages the new mailbox does not have are kept and marked, never deleted. They stay searchable in TALISK_HQ.

If your old mailbox has two-factor authentication

This is the step that catches people out. Once two-factor authentication is switched on, most providers stop accepting your normal password for mail programs and require an application-specific password instead. Your usual password will simply be refused, and the mail server will not say why.

So if TALISK_HQ cannot sign in to your old mailbox, create a new application-specific password with your mail provider and use that. Trying your normal password again will not work, however many times you try it.

Undoing a move

While a move can still be undone, an Undo option appears on the account.

Undo puts your messages back as they were. It does not restore the sign-in to your old mailbox. You will need to sign in to that mailbox again, and if it has two-factor authentication turned on you will need an application-specific password for it.

Signatures on Outlook

TALISK_HQ cannot read a signature out of Outlook, because Outlook does not offer a way to do it. On an Outlook mailbox, choose the Custom signature option in Settings and paste your signature in. It then behaves exactly like a Gmail signature.

Before you move the mail itself

Two things to check with whoever manages your domain, because getting them in the wrong order stops your mail being delivered:

Add your new provider to your SPF record before the MX record moves. If your domain publishes a strict DMARC policy, mail sent through the new provider before SPF knows about it is rejected outright, not filed as spam.
Move the MX record only once the mail itself has been moved.

If you are not sure who manages your domain, ask before changing anything: a wrong MX record stops mail arriving at all.