How to move Gmail to Outlook (and keep your labels)

Why people move Gmail to Outlook

The reasons usually fall into one of three groups:

• A new job runs on Microsoft 365. You want years of personal or freelance mail in the same app you now use all day, or your old business moved from Google Workspace to Microsoft.
• Consolidating. You have a Gmail account, an Outlook.com account and maybe an old work archive, and you want one place to search all of it.
• Leaving Google. You are closing the Google account, or a Workspace account is being shut down, and you need a copy of the mail that doesn’t depend on Google.

The first two can often be solved without moving any files. The third needs a real, standalone copy. That difference decides which approach you should use.

Two approaches: connect the account or create an archive

A. Connect Gmail directly in Outlook

Outlook can add a Gmail account like any other mailbox. In classic Outlook use File → Add Account; in the new Outlook, open the account settings and add an account. Enter your Gmail address and Outlook sends you to Google’s own sign-in page. If the account doesn’t connect, check that IMAP access is allowed in Gmail’s settings (for Workspace accounts, your administrator may need to allow it).

Your mail stays on Google’s servers; Outlook shows it and keeps a local copy (a cache) so you can read it offline. Labels appear as folders, so a message with three labels shows up in three folders, plus All Mail. Outlook may only cache recent mail by default; look for its offline mail setting if you need everything available without a connection.

B. Create an archive PST from a Google Takeout export

Google Takeout exports your whole mailbox as an MBOX file. Converted to a PST (Outlook Data File), it becomes a self-contained copy on your own disk. It survives closing the Google account, and you can open it or import it into any Outlook mailbox, including Microsoft 365.

The rest of this article covers approach B, step by step.

Step 1: Export your Gmail with Google Takeout

Here is the short version. Our Google Takeout guide has every screen in detail, including what to do if Mail is missing on a Workspace account.

1. Go to takeout.google.com, signed in to the Gmail account you want to export.
2. Click Deselect all, then tick Mail. Otherwise Takeout exports every Google product, from Photos to YouTube.
3. Optionally, click All Mail data included to choose specific labels. Leave it alone to export everything.
4. Check the format is MBOX and click Next step.
5. Choose Export once, a .zip or .tgz file type and the largest file size (50 GB), then click Create export.
6. Wait for the email from Google. Small mailboxes are often ready within an hour; large ones can take a day or two.
7. Download every part listed in the email and extract each one.
8. Open Takeout/Mail and find All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox. That single file holds all your mail.

How big will the export be?

Roughly as big as the storage your mail uses in Google. You can see it at the bottom of the Gmail inbox or on Google’s storage page. Keep in mind that Google storage is shared with Drive and Photos, so the mail part is usually smaller than the total.

Large exports are split into several archives, named like takeout-…-001.zip, -002.zip and so on. Each part is a complete archive on its own, so extract them one by one. The mail normally sits in one of them; if you find more than one .mbox file, keep them all together.

Plan for disk space: you need room for the downloaded archives, the extracted MBOX and later the PST, so about three times the mailbox size at the peak. You can delete the archives once the MBOX is extracted. If the PST will be large, read Outlook PST size limits first.

How Gmail labels become Outlook folders

The Takeout MBOX is one big file, but every message carries a record of its labels (in a header called X-Gmail-Labels). MoveMyInbox’s Gmail labels mode reads that record and places each message in an Outlook folder:

Each message goes in exactly one folder

Unlike connecting over IMAP, nothing is duplicated. When a message has several labels, the first match wins: Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Spam and Trash come first, then your own labels. So a message labelled both Inbox and “Clients” lands in Inbox. The PST stays the size of your mailbox, and search results don’t show three copies of every email.

System labels aren’t folders

Gmail’s automatic labels, such as “Important”, “Opened” and the “Category” tabs (Social, Promotions and so on), don’t become folders. “Unread” and “Starred” are carried over as Outlook’s unread and flagged status instead.

Step 2: Convert the MBOX to a PST

Outlook can’t open MBOX files, so the Takeout file needs converting. There are free routes, such as importing it into Thunderbird and copying it to an IMAP mailbox, but they are slow for big mailboxes and lose the label structure. Our comparison of four MBOX to PST methods covers them honestly.

With MoveMyInbox, the conversion works from any browser on Windows, Mac, Linux or a Chromebook:

1. Create an account, click New conversion and drag All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox onto the upload area. Upload the extracted file, not the .zip.
2. Under Folders, choose Use Gmail labels.
3. See the one-time price for the file’s size (details on the pricing page) and pay with Stripe.
4. Wait while the conversion runs in the cloud, typically a few minutes, then download the PST.

Attachments, inline images, dates, senders and recipients, and text in any language are kept. A message that can’t be read cleanly isn’t dropped; it is added with the original attached as an .eml file. One conversion handles up to 50 GB. Your upload is deleted as soon as the PST is ready and the PST after 7 days; see the security page for details.

Step 3: Import the PST into Outlook

First copy the PST to a local folder such as Documents\Outlook Files, not a network drive or a OneDrive or Dropbox synced folder. Then decide whether to open it or import it.

Open or import?

• Open the PST if you want it as a separate archive. It appears at the bottom of the folder pane and stays on this computer. In classic Outlook: File → Open & Export → Open Outlook Data File.
• Import it if you want the mail inside your mailbox. With Microsoft 365, Outlook.com or Exchange, it is then uploaded and appears on all your devices.

Importing in classic Outlook for Windows

1. Click File → Open & Export → Import/Export.
2. Choose Import from another program or file, then Outlook Data File (.pst).
3. Browse to the PST, choose Do not import duplicates and click Next.
4. Select the top folder, keep Include subfolders ticked, choose where the mail goes and click Finish.

New Outlook and Mac

PST support in the new Outlook for Windows is limited and still rolling out. If you don’t see an option to import or open an Outlook data file, switch to classic Outlook, which is the reliable way to work with PST files. In Outlook for Mac, look for File → Import and choose the Outlook for Windows archive (.pst) option; in some versions this is only available in Legacy Outlook. The PST import guide covers each version in detail.

Before you close your Google account

If the point of the move is to leave Google, check the result before deleting anything:

1. Compare a few folder counts in Outlook with the matching labels in Gmail.
2. Open some old messages with attachments and make sure the files open.
3. Search for a name or phrase you know is in there.
4. Keep the Takeout MBOX and the PST somewhere safe, ideally in two places.

Remember that the PST is a snapshot. Mail that reaches Gmail after the export isn’t in it, so set up forwarding to your new address, or run a final Takeout just before you close the account.

Frequently asked questions