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Thursday, September 10, 2009

Moving Email from an Old Server to a New Server

Recently I ran into this problem. Today actually, that's really very recent I suppose. Client had transferred her websites to Hostgator. Hostgator did the transfer of the SITE, but not her email. Yipes! We need those emails. Her domain had already propped to the new hosting account.
You can do a full backup through cPanel and restore it to your new webhost, and that will do the trick. BUT what if you already transferred all of your files, things are working well, and doing the full backup/restore could screw up what you've done already? Really, all you want to do is transfer your emails - nothing else.
I've tried a few things before I found el solution.
First, create the identical email account in your new host (me@you.com > me@you.com) - I can't promise it will work if you choose a new email address. I can't promise it will work anyway actually. :)
Open the old host - probably using the IP address (i.e. ftp://12.345.678.910/) in Explorer. EXPLORER. NOT your FTP program - won't work.
  • Start > Run > "explorer" > Enter
  • Type your ftp:// thing (above) into the address bar > Enter
  • Right click on the screen & "Login As"
  • Enter your cPanel username/password, or you can use your FTP (probably the same), just be sure you have full permissions to the root directory.

Once you're in, click MAIL

Click the email address you want to restore.

Your current email will be stored in the folder called "cur", but you can COPY any of the folders in there. So do that - highlight > copy.

Save to your hard drive somewhere - desktop, zip, I don't care. Just paste it somewhere. Don't try to get fancy and put it on a CD or DVD. Just KISS....put it on your hard drive. It will take a LONG TIME to download. The more email you have, the longer it takes.

Upload these files to your new host in the MAIL directory that resides in the ROOT directory. This should restore your emails. You can do the upload via FTP client, it was the downloading that wasn't happenin' in the FTP client. I use FileZilla.

If you have no idea what I just typed up there, then maybe this isn't a good project for you. Or you can send me $50 to type out the instructions in layman's terms. :D

I only transferred the "cur" folder, I didn't try any others but I can't imagine it wuuld be any different.

You MUST have a normal host to do this. I'm betting it won't work on a big reseller host like GoDaddy because they like to restrict your access. Pppplllllltttt on them.

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