Email is the most common form of communication for both internal and external teams and customers. Whether it is Gmail or Outlook, your email service provider makes a difference in how you sort and manage your emails.
Although both Gmail and Outlook get the job done by sending and receiving emails, Outlook offers some key features that can improve your email management. Here are some reasons why you should make the transition from Gmail to Outlook as your email service provider.
Practicality
Microsoft Outlook isn’t just an email service. It’s an application that is specifically designed to help people manage email, offering features such as automatic integration across email, calendar and contacts. Many individuals that use Outlook for email take advantage of Microsoft Office 365, which is a suite of services and products that includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. With Office 365, you can manage all your tasks from one server, ensuring that you’ll never miss a meeting, message, or email again.
Features
Outlook caters to people who have specific wants and needs and offers excellent organizational features. Users can search messages by keywords, size, or date and have the option to flag and change the importance of messages by marking them – making them easier to find later. Outlook lets you choose how you want to organize your emails – you can put them in alphabetical order, priority order, and create different folders. You also have the option to create categories for items, making them easier to find. Some other key features Outlook offers to its users include
- Pin messages to the top of your inbox
- Modify the email conversation order
- Filter emails quickly and easily
Transition
The switch from Gmail to Outlook and changing your email address seems complex at first since your email address is used for various purposes, and you don’t want to lose communication on it. You likely want to keep all your past emails, contacts, and calendar items as well – which you can! Switching from a Gmail address to an Outlook address is simple and can be done with a few easy steps.
Step 1: Have an Outlook email address.
When switching from Gmail to Outlook, you either have an existing Microsoft email address (@msn, @hotmail, @live.com), or you’ll need to sign up for one. To sign up, simply go to outlook.com, click “sign up,” and your new account will be ready to go.
Step 2: Forward Gmail emails to your new Outlook account
In order to set up your Gmail account to forward new messages to your Outlook, you will need to hook up the two accounts for email forwarding by completing the following steps:
- Sign in to Gmail
- Click “Add a forwarding address,” type in your new Outlook email, and confirm
You’ll receive a confirmation email from Gmail that you’ll need to click to confirm.
Step 3: Set your Gmail address as a “send-as” address
Enable Outlook to use your Gmail address for sending mail – this lets Outlook know that messages forwarded from your Gmail account were meant for you. This can be done in Outlook under “Managing your account” and selecting “Sending/receiving email from other accounts.” From there, click “You can send mail from these accounts” and “Add another account to send from.” Enter your Gmail account where it says, “Add an email address,” and click “Send verification email.” Verify your email address by clicking the link, and you’re good to go.
Step 4: Link Gmail contacts to Outlook
Importing all your Gmail contacts to Outlook is easy. You can import contacts from a CSV file or directly from your Google contacts. To import from CSV, click the “People” icon on the left side of the pane. This will allow you to manually add contacts or import them.
Follow Step 4 of this guide to learn how to import contacts directly from your Gmail list.
Step 5: Add your old mail to Outlook
Now that you’ve set up all your new Gmail messages to be forwarded to your Outlook account, the last step is to add your older messages. To copy the emails from default folders like the Inbox and Sent Items folder, press CTRL+A to select them all and then copy them to your corresponding folder in your Outlook.com mailbox.
And there you go! With these steps, you’re all set to make the transition from Gmail to Outlook.
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