pheww!!!! …. thats a long heading :). but it conveys just what i want it to.

i host my own email on google apps but wanted to move to windows live mail for quite some time. gmail interface is too slow and unpredictable for my needs. u must be wondering why would i want to move to hotmail. well, the fact is that hotmail works the best with outlook and I havent found any other mail which is better than it for syncing with outllok.

anyways, there are multiple ways of doing this. if you want to transfer mails from gmail to hotmail, then you can simply go to http://www.trueswitch.com/winlive. enter the details and you are done.

however, if you are like me and are using google apps for your mail. then it isnt that simple. one way is to use the pop fetch capability in hotmail.  however, it is a tedious way and requires a lot of work from your side.

the method that i describe below works for any pop/imap enabled mail. what it means is that you can transfer mail from any imap/pop enabled mail service to hotmail using this method.

with me so far? great! …. the method is simple.

install windows live mail desktop client. setup the two email accounts (account from which you want to move, and account to which you want to move to) in windows live mail. then download all the mails from your old email account to windows live mail. then select all the mails that have to be moved and drag them to the appropriate folder in hotmail.

well, thats it. downloading takes time. uploading takes time too. but you get a lot of flexibility to arrange which folders need to be updated or copied etc.

anyways, let me know in comments if you are stuck at any place. will be glad to help you out.