John’s organization was earlier using Gmail for Google Apps but not that they have migrated to Microsoft Office, he would like to make the switch from Gmail to Microsoft Outlook. He is also looking to transfer all the old email messages from Gmail to Outlook on the desktop.

Microsoft Outlook is available for both Windows PC & Mac OS X and both versions can connect to your Gmail account and fetch your emails. You can either use POP3 or IMAP to access Gmail from Outlook though the latter is recommended as it allows 2-way sync.

Fetch your Gmail into Microsoft Outlook

Here’s how you can import email from Gmail to Microsoft Outlook. The technique works @gmail.com addresses and also Google Apps email accounts that use a custom domain like @example.com.

To get started, go to your Gmail Settings, click the Forwarding and POP / IMAP tab and Enable IMAP. Save your changes.

Next open Microsoft Outlook on your computer and go to Tools, Account Settings. Click the plus (+) symbol to add a new IMAP account to your Outlook. Here enter your Gmail account details as shown in the screenshot:

Put your full email address in the Username, enter the password, set the incoming Mail (IMAP) Server as imap.gmail.com and enable “Use SSL to connect.” The incoming server port should be set to 993.

For the outgoing email server, set the address as smtp.gmail.com, set the port as 465 and enable “Use SSL to connect.” Go to More options and choose Use Incoming Server Info for authentication.

That’s it. Outlook will begin downloading all emails from your Gmail account though this process may take a while to complete depending on the size of your Gmail mailbox.

Gmail uses labels while Outlook works around folders. During import, your Gmail labels will automatically be mapped to corresponding folders inside Outlook. Also, you have enabled 2-factor authentication inside your Google Account, you need to create an app-specific password and your regular Gmail password will not work.