Migrating Your DataYard Email Data to Gmail from Apple Mail

Migrating Your DataYard Email Data to Gmail from Apple Mail

If you use Apple Mail, the easiest way to migrate your DataYard mail to another provider is to use the Export/Import process within the Mail app on your system.  We'll walk through this process for the latest version available, but you can view the steps for older versions using the drop down menu at the top of Apple's support page, found here.

There are some important steps you need to take care of before you begin. Here's your Checklist For A Successful Transfer
  1. Your @donet.com or @gemair.com email must already be configured (and working) in Apple Mail as an IMAP account.
  2. Your new email provider must also support IMAP.
    The following providers are known to support IMAP as their email protocol: Gmail and Outlook.com.
  3. Your new email account is also configured in Apple Mail as an IMAP account
  4. The email transfer process works best on a laptop or desktop computer, not a smartphone or tablet.
All four of these checklist items need to be satisfied before you can transfer your email. These transfer instructions won't work if you haven't fulfilled all of the steps above.

If you need help setting up Apple Mail for Step #1 in the checklist you should take a look at the How-To article below. Setup your email program, get your @donet.com or @gemair.com email working there first, and then return to these transfer steps.
  1. Setting Up an Email Client To Access Your Connect Mail
If you need help setting up your new provider's account in Apple Mail, please refer to your new provider's documentation/support.

IMPORTANT: We also recommend that you configure your email forwarding first, so that no mail is missed during the migration process.  Return to this procedure after you've forwarded your donet.com email to your Gmail address. 

Transfer your Email
  1. Right mouse click on the Inbox. A floating menu will appear. Click on "Export Mailbox...".


  2. Select a location to save the export, in the example image below, we've created a folder titled "donet.com old mail" on the desktop. Select the Options button and select "Export all Subfolders"


  3. Once the export process completes, you'll have an mbox file in the folder you specified. Next, we'll import that mbox file back into the Mail app.  At the top tool bar, select file, and import mailbox


  4. Select import mail from Apple Mail, and continue:


  5. Then, select the file you just exported:


  6. You'll be presented with the contents of your inbox in the file, select the folders you want to import and click "Continue"


  7. The messages will be imported into a new mailbox called Import in the Mail sidebar.  From there, you can drag the imported INBOX folder into your new provider's account.  Mail will start uploading the mail to your provider's servers.  This could take quite a long time, depending on the number or size of messages you're importing, so patience is key here.  Additionally, it may seem as though messages are missing once the Mail app appears to be done, but often there is a delay between the completion in Mail and when messages show up in the new provider's webmail interface.


  8. Once you're confident that all mail has been delivered to your new provider, you can remove your donet.com account from Apple Mail.  To do that, Click Mail and then Accounts.


  9. In the menu that comes up, select your DataYard/Donet account and then click the "-" button. This will permanently remove your Donet email account from your Apple Mail configuration.


And there you have it: once you've successfully completed these steps you will have copied your email messages from your Donet email account to your Gmail account.